Amphibians
Fire Salamander
Salamandra salamandra · also called spotted salamander (Europe)
The fire salamander is the amphibian most Europeans picture when they hear the word “salamander” — a glossy black animal splashed with yellow, orange, or red, moving slowly through wet leaf litter on a rainy night. The bold colouring is not decoration. It is a warning.
Overview
Fire salamanders live in the shaded, humid deciduous and mixed forests of central and southern Europe, almost always in hilly or mountainous country near clean, cool, running water. They need moisture and shelter: by day they hide under logs, stones, and in burrows, and they come out at night to hunt, or during the day only when it rains. Adults are strongly attached to a small home range and will use the same daytime retreat for years.
The warning colours and the toxin
The yellow-and-black pattern is aposematic — an advertisement of toxicity. Glands concentrated behind the eyes (the parotoid glands) and running along the back secrete samandarin and related alkaloids, which attack the nervous system, causing convulsions and, in strong doses, respiratory paralysis in a predator. The salamander can tense the glands to fire a fine spray of toxin up to a metre, aimed at an attacker’s face.
Because of this defence, adult fire salamanders have few predators. Snakes, some birds, and wild boar occasionally take them, but most animals that try one learn quickly.
An unusual way of breeding
Fire salamander reproduction varies across the range. In most populations the female is ovoviviparous: she carries fertilised eggs internally for eight to nine months and then, at night, backs into the shallow edge of a stream or spring and releases a clutch of already-hatched, gilled larvae. The larvae grow in the water for two to six months before metamorphosing and leaving it.
In some Iberian and high-mountain populations the female goes further, retaining the young until they have fully metamorphosed and giving birth to a small number of miniature adults on land — an adaptation to places where fast, cold water makes larval life too risky.
Diet
Fire salamanders are slow, deliberate hunters of the forest floor. They eat earthworms, slugs, snails, spiders, millipedes, beetles, and other insects, and larger individuals will take newts and young frogs. They locate prey by smell and sight and seize it with a quick forward lunge and a snap of the jaws.
Threats and conservation
The fire salamander is listed as Least Concern but its trend is downward, and it faces a serious emerging threat:
- Bsal (the salamander chytrid fungus), introduced from Asia via the amphibian pet trade, eats through salamander skin and has wiped out local fire salamander populations in northwest Europe since around 2010. Efforts to contain it include trade restrictions and monitoring.
- Habitat loss and fragmentation as forests are cleared and streams culverted or polluted.
- Road mortality, especially on rainy nights during the breeding migration.
- Climate change, which is drying out the cool, wet microhabitats the species depends on at the southern and lower edges of its range.
Fire Salamander: common questions
Why is it called a fire salamander?
In medieval Europe, firewood brought indoors often had salamanders hidden in it, and when the wood was put on the fire the animals would crawl out to escape the heat — appearing, to people watching, to be born from the flames. This gave rise to a long folklore linking salamanders with fire and the belief that they could survive it.
Is the fire salamander poisonous?
Yes. Glands behind its eyes and along its back produce samandarin, a toxin that causes strong irritation, muscle spasms, and, in high doses, convulsions and paralysis in a predator. The salamander can contract the glands to squirt the toxin a short distance. It is harmful if it gets in the eyes or mouth of a person or a pet, but handling one briefly and washing your hands is not dangerous.
Does the fire salamander lay eggs?
Most populations are ovoviviparous — the female retains the eggs inside her body and, months later, deposits well-developed gilled larvae into a cool, clean stream or pool. Some populations in Spain and the mountains go a step further and are fully viviparous, giving birth to a small number of miniature, fully terrestrial salamanders that skip the aquatic stage entirely.
What is threatening fire salamanders?
A fungal disease called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, or Bsal — the "salamander-eating fungus" — arrived in Europe from Asia through the pet trade around 2010 and has caused catastrophic die-offs of fire salamanders in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. Habitat loss, stream pollution, and road deaths add to the pressure.