Chinese giant salamander episode

The Wildlife Wonders Podcast is discussing amphibians in their latest episode, specifically the Chinese giant salamander. Amphibians are cold-blooded animals with backbones that regulate their body temperature from their environment. They need a moist habitat, breathe through their skin, and externally fertilize their eggs. The Chinese giant salamander is the largest living amphibian and can live over 60 years. They are critically endangered due to habitat loss, pollution, and being captured for commercial farming and consumption. They eat fish, frogs, worms, and insects, and use vibrations to locate prey. They breed in the summer months, laying hundreds of eggs, but many do not survive to maturity. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Wildlife Wonders Podcast. I am your host, Darianna, and we're here another day of another week to give you another fact. So we have went over mammals, reptiles, birds, and vertebrates, and we have one more group, one more group, you guys, before we start to cycle over, and that is your amphibians. So I know I did post on my Instagram, like a couple animals I may or may not talk about. But today, we are going to talk about the Chinese giant salamander, okay, fairly newer amphibian to be discovered more information about it, but you're going to learn about all that. Just stick with me through the podcast, and you'll learn some facts. So just to start off, in case we don't remember from the first episode, or if you want to go back and watch it, feel free. It's on the same same platforms as before. But the amphibians are animals that have backbone. They are cold blooded. So they get their body temperature, they regulate their body temperature from the environment around them. They need a moist place to live. They can breathe air through their skin, and they externally fertilize their eggs. So they pop the eggs out, the eggs get done up on the outside of the world or in the world. And then they come to life in little larvae and go swimming around. And then they can also grow legs when they mature. And they eat meat. So usually your amphibians are your salamanders, and your frogs and toads. I'm pretty sure I'm missing someone in that group. But that's a little background amphibians. Like I said, if you want to know the difference between the different types of animals, amphibians, vertebrates, mammals, reptiles, you can go back and watch or listen to the first episode and I go over the different classes of animals and the differences and similarities between them. But we're going to get right on to it. I'm not going to dive too much in that. And we're going to talk about the Chinese giant salamander. And it's a fairly new, fairly new amphibian. They were discovered, you know, animals always there, but they were discovered and I guess gained popularity in 2019. They are amphibians. They are the world's largest living amphibian. If you see you can go on my page and look at a picture of it, but you can also look it up the Chinese giant giant salamander. They're huge. They're really big. There's a lot of pictures of people holding them up and it's like taking up the whole hand. There are five species, but now due to breeding and captivity, a lot of the species are mixing. So it's kind of hard to tell what distinct species is what because they have a little genetics from everything, you know, when people are crossbreeding species. Also, this is the largest amphibian, but it is one of three of the giant or the largest giant salamanders. So there's this one, the Chinese, and then there's the South China or South Chinese. And then there's the Japanese salamander. This is the biggest, but I just want to let you know that there are three of three giant types. So like I said, they were newly discovered in 2019. They are critically endangered in the wild because one habitat loss, climate change, pollution, but the biggest thing that the biggest reason for this is humans. Of course, unfortunately, we affect a lot of things around us, whether we intend to or not, but a lot of humans are capturing them and taking them out of their wild habitat and breeding them and putting them in commercial farming for a couple of different reasons. One reason is they are a delicacy for the wealthy. They are a delicacy for people. I don't know if it's just outside of China, but as far as I know, it's a delicacy in China to eat giant salamanders. So a lot of them are being captured with nets and hooks and taken and put into farms. People are thriving off them economically because they are selling them, they're capturing and selling them and breeding them to be sold to be eaten. Sad world out there, but yeah, they're being eaten quite often. So because of that, they are critically endangered. You do not find a lot of them in the wild. A lot of them that you will see is in captivity. So that's the sad part about that. But on the good side, they can live over 60 years if they're left to live that long. Like I said, a lot of them are killed before that point, but if left alone and managed care in captivity and good environment, not worrying about being caught and other predators, they can live over 60 years. They are the longest living amphibians. I don't know if they were captured and someone said, hey, yeah, this is a 60 year old one, but however they figure that out, they are the longest living. Now I said they are so big, but you were kind of like, how big are they? Okay. They are 5.9 to six feet long. They are tall. They are, I guess the average man is five, nine, the height of an average man to a kind of tall man. And they're roughly 110 pounds full grown. Of course, this could probably vary depending on where they are, their food supply. There's probably other factors to that, but in general average, roughly 110 pounds. There are grayish or kind of greenish brown color, and they have a long, thick body. They look like if I had imagined an overgrown, like when you take a snail, a snail out of the shell, like an overgrown, like snail or slug, it kind of reminds me of that in the water. They're extremely long. A lot of their body is their tail, actually. They have four stubby little limbs, like little legs. And they have a really like blunt, flat head and very, very small eyes, extremely small eyes. Their eyes are not very useful, but we'll go over that later. And fun fact about the whole body thing, they have no eyelids, so it's just eyes. They can't blink. I guess it's always open. And the tiny eyes are actually behind their nostrils. And the last thing, I guess, about their weird look is they have like their mouth is bent into a grin, like a, I don't know how to describe it, but it's like bent down into like a little grin. For amphibians, they actually do not have gills. They absorb their oxygen through their skin. They have no gills. They do not necessarily, it's not typical that you'll see them come out the water either. They stay on the bottom of the rocky rivers. So going right into that, since we're mentioning where they stay, let's go into the habitat, shall we? Now, I'm specifically talking about the Chinese shining salamander. Like I said, there are other types, but specifically this type stays in rocky mountain rivers and large streams in China. Before it was central and southern China, but now they're starting to spread out because of the hunting, because of habitat loss pollution. It's more fragmented now. They're not all found in one general area. So they're in a lot of times, like I said, they do not come out the water. So a lot of times they're at the bottom of the river. They're more active at night during the day. So yeah, they hide in their caves during the day, kind of like octopuses, you guys. If you watch the octopus episode, they kind of hide in their den. They might go out and eat and everything during the day, but most of the time they hide in their den to mind their business. And then at night for this specific species, they go out and they hunt. And so while they're in the freshwater, because they absorb, because they absorb the oxygen through their skin, the best environment for them is fast flowing water in the freshwater is where they can get the most amount of oxygen so that they can live a plentiful life. Okay. So their diet, they're at the bottom of the water, they're like these big salamanders. What do they eat? What do they like to eat when they're relaxing in their den? They eat fish, frogs, worms, snails, insects, crayfish, crab, and sometimes even their own own salamanders. They eat salamanders as well, or smaller salamanders. They use a little suction technique to eat them, eat them right up, suck it up. That's also why sometimes they get caught in nets and hooks really easily. I guess they suck up their prey and they're like, oh, a net, by that time it's too late. They're going into it. Fun fact about the food thing though, you know how earlier I mentioned they have really small eyes. So their eyes are not very useful, it's kind of just like placeholders on their head. They're there, but they're not that great. So they get their prey by using vibrations, like sensing the vibrations in the water. So as the water's moving, as stuff is moving by, they're like, oh yeah, that's dinner. That's about to be a real nice fish fried up filet. That's how they get their fish, that's how they get their prey. They have little nodes that run down the sides of their body from their head to the tail, and that's how they get their vibrations, or that's how they feel the vibrations of the nodes. So I'm like, hey, something's by you, you might want to open your mouth, you might want to get that. And it's on their whole body, but they mostly eat or find their food or do that method at night. Not to say they wouldn't eat on a little snack during the day, but they're night hunters. So now that we know, okay, where they're at, if we wanted to find them, what do they eat? We talked about how critically endangered they are, mostly because of humans. So if they're so endangered, how do they get with their mates and make more salamanders? Well, they breed, usually breed and get with their other salamanders and make their eggs or their babies. They usually breed in July, August, and September. And this is when the water temperature is around 60, in the 60s, it's around late 60s. And so the females lay 400 to 500 eggs in a string of larvae, they hook it up in a little string. This again, reminds me of octopuses in a way, but when they lay, you gotta think when animals lay that many eggs, a lot of them don't usually make it to maturity for different reasons, water temperatures, predators, they're just not meant to make it, whatever the reason may be. A lot of them don't make it. So I'm probably saying that's a lot of eggs, but I would say maybe have 25% of that of them actually make it to being full grown. So once they're laid in there, you have the females lay it and the men go in there, the females lay it in a underwater like burrow, little cave, then the men go in there and they spray them, for lack of better words, they spray them and they fertilize them. Once they're sprayed and fertilized, the man then protects and cares for the eggs. And this kind of reminds me of the cassowary, once the female lays it, she off, the man said, Hey, I'm gonna protect the eggs and I'm gonna take care of our family. So they do the same thing. He protects and cares for the eggs until they hatch. And they take about two, roughly two months before they hatch. Now, like a lot of animals, like little turtles, when they have to run into the sea, once they come out, once the babies hatch, they're on their own, mommy and daddy ain't around, they're not going to feed them, spoon feed them, they're going to say, Hey, you good now you're in the world, you're going to make it, either you make it or you don't. So once they hatch, they are developing the stream. They're taking food after about a month, they start eating their own food. And usually around five to six years old is when they're like, Hey, I'm mature, I'm a full grown adult, I can pay my bills, whatever you want to say. That's when they're ready, I guess, to reproduce, be on their own, well, they are on their own, but reproduce and keep the bloodline going. Five to six years is a long time if you think about it, when if they're getting eaten, eaten at such a fast rate, or if they're getting captured and bred at such a fast rate, sorry I'm like, don't die, jeez. So yeah, I feel like yes, it seems kind of long, but also they're not producing, if they're getting eaten so quickly, is it really that long? That's what I'm trying to say. So that's how the mating happens. I couldn't find much information as to whether they travel in groups or travel alone, they only get up to mating. I mean, most of the information that I could find was on how critically endangered and dangerous they are because of humans, but hey, yeah, it's nothing new. So the main predators, since we're talking about it, is humans, but there are other animals that can eat them as well, such as otters, and weasels, red foxes, and hog badgers. If you think about it, I feel like otters eat a lot of animals, otters are vicious, I feel like they eat a lot of animals for such cute things, but we're not talking about otters, we're talking about these giant salamanders. So when something, a predator tries to eat the salamander, they do this cool thing and put this sticky white substance all over them, and it's so they can avoid predation, they can avoid being eaten. I don't know if it like, when an animal tries to bite on it, if they slide out because of the sticky substance, or maybe it tastes that and like, ew, why would I want to eat this on this? Ew, I can't. I don't know the reason, but they put this sticky substance around them, I don't know if it makes a smell or does something to other animals, but they no longer want to touch them. So that's the purpose of that. Now, to the end, I know I kind of went through, it's not, it's not a lot of information on these animals, you guys. Like, I don't know if it's because they're being eaten so quickly, I know they are related in the past to some Jurassic dinosaurs, and of course, once they're gone, there's not going to be any salamander this big, and they've been in museums and other stuff about history of maybe some of their past relatives, but like I said, it's still kind of relatively new, and they're dying at a quick rate, so hopefully, maybe in the future, something can be done, and maybe we'll find out a lot more information and details about them. But we're going to get right into the end, the fun facts, which y'all come here for, I hope you come here for the rest of episode two, but we're going to get into the fun facts. So, like I said before, they do not have gills. They take the oxygen through their skin, they just swim through, they absorb it through their skin. I do know that when the larvae, the larva comes out, or the larvae comes out, they do have little gills when they're younger, but eventually, as they grow, I guess the gills just disappear, vamoose, so when they're older and mature, they do not have gills. They're also over-harvested for human consumption, I did say this before, they are a delicacy among the wealthy and probably also tourists, because where can you say you ate a salamander except for like when you go to other countries, or like crazy stuff like that, except for when you go to other countries. But, along with that, they're not only eaten for, they're not only captured to be eaten, but in some traditional Chinese medicine, they use the giant salamander for part of, I guess, the creation of the medicine. I could not tell you, because I never caught and cooked and cut up a salamander. I couldn't tell you what part is used for the medicine, but it is sometimes used for traditional medicine, so I guess, it sounds bad, but I guess that's a benefit somewhere along the line, because it's helping someone, it might be helping someone live. I mean, we sometimes use venom in a lot of medicine, so you don't have to kill an animal for that, but nonetheless, regardless, it might be helping someone live. And the very last fact of today, this salamander is nicknamed the baby fish, because they produce sounds that resemble baby cries. I thought that was really cute, like, aw, come here baby. It's like, it's ironic, because it's like baby fish, but it's like the biggest amphibian out there. It's like a, it's just ironic, we saw something, a baby, that's like the biggest thing, but thank you for listening to another episode with me, and we have went through all the classes of animals, and guess what, next week, we will start over, and we'll start the animal train back over, starting with mammals again. You can follow me on Instagram, on my Wildlife Wonders page, that is wildlifewonders, with an s, podcast, all one word, all lowercase, there you'll find updates on the latest episodes, you will see posts about the animals we have talked about, and I'd love for y'all to reach out and communicate with me, if you have any comments about the podcast, if you have an animal or a fact you want to share, any pictures, please send them there, I want to see them all. If you have anything cool, you can tag me on there, and every episode will drop every Friday, and on every major broadcasting, Spotify, Apple Music, iHeartRadio, and more, so stay in tune, stay in touch, and I'll see you next week, bye!