WANDERING SALAMANDERS

      The adaptations of plants and animals for survival never cease to amaze me.  Many are truly remarkable.  I recently learned that a kind of lungless salamander, the wandering salamander, climbs giant redwood trees in northern California and Vancouver Island to find mates and invertebrate food, especially ants, in clumps of arboreal, epithytic ferns in the crotches of redwood limbs.  What's remarkable is salamanders must keep their skins moist to live, and they expose themselves to predators when climbing a couple hundred feet up those large trees.  

     But the air in those redwood forests by the west coast is humid, keeping wandering salamander skins moist, so these unique salamanders can leave the dampness of log and leaf shelters on forest floors.  And those skins are dark and yellow-mottled, making these slender, five-inch amphibians nearly invisible on tree trunks and boughs.      

     Many wandering salamanders live in the moisture of sheltering places on woodland floors, where they are safe from drying out and predators.  But other individuals of these salamanders live among ferns mentioned in tree canopies, and in damp, dark bark crevices.  And, like all species of salamanders, wandering salamanders mostly hunt invertebrates during times of high humidity, or when rain is falling.   

     Wandering salamanders have long legs for a salamander, and long, modified toes that evolved to get a firm grip on bark when climbing trees.  High humidity, camouflaged skins and those special toes enable wandering salamanders to have homes in tall tree tops, where other salamanders would not dare to be.  

     When disturbed in the treetops, wandering salamanders leap from a branch and glide down, down to another tree trunk, or the forest floor, unharmed.  That gliding is unique to wandering salamanders.  And they use their spread legs and tails to slow their descent a little.  

     Lungless salamanders, like all their close relatives in the Plethodon genus, are well-named because they do not have lungs.  They exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide through their camouflaged skins, and mouth and throat linings.    

     Female wandering salamanders lay eight to ten eggs in damp, sheltered places under leaves and logs on forest floors, and among sheltering ferns high in the tops of redwood trees.  The young do not have a larval stage like most salamanders, but hatch as small replicas of their parents, ready to dine on tiny invertebrates.    

     Nature is always amazingly wonderful: Created by a Higher Power.  Wandering salamanders, for example, departed from the norm of their close relatives by living in tree tops, where they could get away with that in a humid atmosphere.  They are truly unique and interesting to know.  

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