Mole Salamander

The mole salamander (Ambystoma talpoideum) is not a glamorous-looking creature. It’s small, unassuming, and slippery. It lives in burrows and in small isolated ponds in the woods. It’s mostly dark brown or black, often mottled with a gray or blue lichen-like pattern. It has a broad, flattened head. It looks a little like some artists’ reconstructions of Tiktaalik, and it’s easy to picture it living back when animals were first starting to crawl onto land.

Mole Salamander
Terrestrial Adult Mole Salamander

Since it’s an amphibian, it does live in water and on land. The eggs are laid in water in late fall or winter, and the larvae hatch and mature through winter and early spring. This is what young mole salamanders look like: striped yellow or tan and brown, with big feathery gills.

Mole Salamander Larva
Mole Salamander Larva

And here’s the awesome thing about these little guys: when they grow up, they can keep their gills and stay in their nice familiar pond as adults. Or they can lose them and venture out onto land to become air-breathing terrestrial adults. I’ve only found the gilled adults in deeper ponds, but that may be because those ponds are the only ones that have enough water year-round for them to survive. This tendency to keep juvenile features into adulthood is called neoteny, and it is fairly common in salamanders.

These nearly-adult salamanders from a deep pond seem quite happy to keep their gills. Though less happy about being trapped in a jar and photographed.

Mole Salamanders, with Gills
Aquatic sub-adult mole salamanders with gills.

The mole salamander has a more famous relative you might have heard of: the axolotl, a large salamander native to Mexico City. The axolotl is even more neotenous. It almost always keeps its gills as an adult. Axolotls can metamorphose, if they get enough iodine, but they usually don’t. Unfortunately, they are nearly extinct in the wild because the lakes they inhabited are almost gone. But they are commonly bred in captivity and kept as pets.

Mole salamanders, at least, seem to be abundant in the areas where they still live. I wasn’t even looking for them (I was looking for another member of the Ambystoma genus, the flatwoods salamander.) but I still managed to find literally hundreds of mole salamanders. (And not one flatwoods salamander, but that’ll be another post.)

Even if I wasn’t looking for them, it was nice to find them. And look how cooperative they are for the camera!

Adult Mole Salamander

Published by

Ethan Harvey

You can find my games at https://ethanharvey.itch.io, and I occasionally blog about under-appreciated wildlife at OverlookedNature.com.

16 thoughts on “Mole Salamander”

  1. This might give me a few nightmares!

    I have heard about Axolotl. Though I don’t know what “neotenous” mean. Could you please tell me?

    Sincerely,
    Anand 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Sorry, “neotenous” describes a species that keeps juvenile features as an adult. Humans are actually one of them! If you look at other primates, you’ll notice that their faces are much flatter when young, then grow longer as the ape matures. Humans never grow “adult primate” faces.

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        2. Alright. In other categories they are drastically different. I understand now. Thanks for explaining 🙂 🙂 Anand

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  2. Very interesting and informative blog. I have a few friends where I live who observe the bird life and keep records. Frogs are rare these days and newts are an endangered species right now. How is the wildlife coping where you are?

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Frogs seem to be doing okay in my region, although there are concerns about chytrid fungus. I’d say the bats are in the most trouble right now; there’s a disease called White Nose that is killing huge numbers of them, and there isn’t much that can be done about it so far.

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  4. Wow. Very informative post, and blog, I reckon. I am quite interested in aqualife (I don’t know if that’s a valid term), and was into fish-keeping for quite a few years, and plan to start again in future. Loved learning about the mole salamander!
    Keep blogging!

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    1. Thank you! I confess, there is a great big hole in my biological knowledge where fish should be. But saltwater aquariums seem like such a fascinating (and satisfyingly geeky) hobby. One day I might try it.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. It really is satisfying and rewarding(?). If you manage to provide the right kind of environment (its easier than it sounds), you can see the fish reproducing! I was lucky enough to witness that in my aquarium. 🙂
        I just woke up one morning and went to feed the fish and oh my, the water was filled with hundreds of tiny translucent fish-kids!

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  5. Pingback: Ephemeral Ponds | Overlooked Nature

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