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This Looks A Lot Like A Barred Tiger Salamander I Kept As A Pet For Several Years
nunn
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Looks like one of the rubber toys in my dog’s toy box!
Up here, we call that bait.
Looks like a happy fellow.
Nope! I don't do lizards .
cute looks like its smiling 😁
We had a water dragon lizard or something like that about 40yrd ago don't remember its name for sure it would lean back and run on its back legs
My departed brother had a iguana
That was like a living vegomatic
Pick it up and it was all teeth and claws
Snake with legs. No thanks.
It's an amphibian, not a reptile, and a very innocuous one at that. Alfred would take food from my hand, little balls of canned dog food or ground beef.
Tiger salamander. You got it. Now whether it looks like Alfred, I couldn't say. As for eating from your fingers, I have had more than a few try to eat my fingers.
Grandson wants an Axolotl. Apparently, there is such a thing, Ambystoma mexicanum.
The references with which I was familiar many years ago, never mentioned the Axolotl as a distinct species. The Axolotl described therein was simply a Barred Tiger Salamander, such as pictured above, which remained in the larval stage, a condition called neoteny. This was fairly common in west Texas, where a salamander might hatch in a stock tank, yet the area around that tank was inhospitable for a salamander, so it remained a larva. Alfred was such a salamander.
Over spring break, 7th grade, one of my classmates captured it, as a larva, out of a tank in west Texas, and he brought it to our Science class. It was adult size, but retained its olive color, gills, and tail fin. It was 13 inches long. We kept it in an aquarium. At the end of the school year, our teacher, Mr. Morris, gave me the salamander to keep. I took it home, named it Alfred, and kept it in an aquarium. Over time, Alfred began to lose his gills and tail fin, and his color went from olive to the colors shown in the picture. I switched him to a terrarium, and he was pretty happy. I kept an old box turtle shell in the terrarium, and Alfred liked to lie in it with his head sticking out. Lots of visitors saw him and thought he was a turtle.
I have some questions though. If the land around said pond will not support a salamander, how did the eggs get in the pond to start with? How does the larval salamander know that leaving the pond will be hazardous to its health? Does the salamander control whether it metamorphoses into an adult, or is it the environment?
The area around those ponds does support tiger salamanders. They spend much or most of the year in the ground, surfacing mostly during the monsoon. Neoteny is controlled by an interaction between genetics, environment, and hormones. Not all are neotenes, and eastern forms cannot do it at all. We also have them here and they are in Arizona as well. I have seen no neotenes here, they lay almost exclusively in ephemeral ponds, so their natal ponds soon dry. The axlotl, is indeed Mexican, from Lake Xochimilco in Mexico City. There are also other neotenic species from other isolated lakes around Central Mexico. We kept and bred them for years at the zoo.
Conant implied that the environment adjacent to the larva's pond might not support a salamander, so the larvae remained larvae. He left me to wonder how the eggs got in the pond to begin with.
Conant also used the term "Axolotl" to describe a neotenic Barred Tiger Salamander, and even provided a sketch of same, identifying it as an "Axolotl." Reckon maybe he didn't know about Ambystoma mexicanum, or could it be that that species hadn't been discovered in 1958?
I understand that the Ambystoma mexicanum is endangered in its natural habitat, but there appear to be people breeding them for the pet trade. That's what my grandson wants, but I think I'll try him out on a larval Tiger Salamander from a bait shop, where they are sold as "water dogs," before laying out the coin for a real Axolotl.
Roger was an interesting guy. I think he kind of generalized the term "axolotl" to any neotenic form. Isolate populations that perhaps were once terrestrial could persist as neotenes since neotenes reach sexual maturity and do breed. That is how we get alolotls. Given the rate at which most young boys abandon youthful obcessions, particularly when they discover girls, I think you are a wise granddad. Zoos and universities gave axolotls to other zoos, so I never bought one. What do they cost?
The Axolotls I've found online are priced from $40 up to several hundred dollars.
$40 seems about right.
He Dog, can you direct me to a source for a well bred Axolotl?
Leucistic preferred.
Sorry Nunn, it has been over 10 years, and my sources then were zoos and University labs. I will do a litte searching. Missed you in Tulsa.
Axolotl Planet is a brick and board place in Dallas that might be worth a look. Might be better than internet purchase. There are 20+ on-line sellers.
I see the online sellers, but I also see warnings about inbreeding. I am aware of Axolotl Planet, but WOW! Their critters are very pricey. Maybe worth it to get a quality critter.