THE WESTERN FOUR-TOED SALAMANDER:
by Percy Leonard
THE Batrachians occupy a place between the reptiles proper and the fishes. They are distinguished from the fishes by the possession of paired limbs furnished with four fingers and a thumb, and though their early days are passed beneath the water, breathing like fishes through their gills, yet when fully grown, almost without exception they breathe through well-developed lungs. There is a superficial resemblance between the reptilian lizard and the batrachian newt or salamander, and they are often confounded together in the popular mind. True reptiles, however, are easily distinguished from batrachians by their overlapping scales, quite different from the smooth moist skins of the latter. Reptiles breathe as we do by expanding the ribs and drawing the air into the hollow thus formed; but batrachians, lacking ribs, are obliged to swallow their air, and a glance at a toad or a salamander will reveal the incessant palpitation of the throat as the air is forced into the lungs. Reptiles are hatched, or born, as the case may be, perfect copies in miniature of their parents and never go through the tadpole stage. Batrachians are divided into two groups: the Salientia (or Jumpers), and the Urodela. The Salientia (or Jumpers) comprise the frogs and toads; and the Urodela include the numerous tribes of newts, water-dogs, efts, and salamanders.
The illustration shows one of the lowliest of the order of Urodela, the western four-toed salamander (Batrachoseps attenuatus). The legs are ridiculously small in comparison to the long, unwieldy body. That the tail is fat and cylindrical is only to be expected, because being a terrestrial salamander, it has no need of a flat tail for swimming like the water-haunting newts. Probably the bulky tail serves as a store of nourishment in reserve for use in time of famine, as does the hump of a camel under similar circumstances. Here at Point Loma these odd creatures may be found under stones in the damp cañons. In the absence of pools they cannot pass through the tadpole stage under water and so the various phases of tadpole transformation are gone through while in the egg. The males are glossy black; but the female figured in the picture has a light brown skin with irregular blotches of flesh color on the tail.
A male once captured by the writer exhibited a curious case of mimicry. He coiled up just like a rattlesnake and looked so venomous and threatening as to inspire terror in anyone who was unaware of his utter powerlessness to do an injury.
The abnormal humidity of the air enables this delicate animal to survive the rainless months of summer, and probably he never ventures from his shelter till the sun goes down and the dew provides a little moisture. The mere contact of his skin with a dewy surface would probably be as refreshing as a draught of water to a thirsty man; but the salamander, like the frog, does not drink: he simply "blots up" his water through the skin.
Thus the four-toed western salamander passes his uneventful days and nights. His pleasures are few and simple and his sorrows correspondingly light.
According to Theosophy, the inner Essence of every creature in this broad universe either is, was, or prepares to become, man; but the mind staggers in the attempt to conceive the enormous stretches of time before such dull, inert, insensitive beings will arrive at the human stage. But pain is a grand stimulant and spur to advance, and perchance when the salamander gets eaten by a snake or a stoat, he gains as compensation for the pangs of death some slight promotion to a higher order of batrachians in his next rebirth! So mote it be.