Rough-skinned newt - safe to touch, deadly to eat.

Rough skinned newt photographed near Duncan on Vancouver Island, 2018.

Although it has been over seven years since I caught the rough-skinned newt in the above photos, I can still remember the event with complete clarity.  My friend, Mike Lynch, and I were walking on a trail near his home in Duncan.  It was a cool but sunny afternoon and we had gotten to the end of a trail and were headed back.  In front of me, on the path, was a most interesting creature.  I had never actually seen one, but I knew it was a rough-skinned newt.

Rough-skinned newts are salamanders, but unlike any other salamander species found in B.C., let alone Canada.  I have caught red-backed salamanders, long-toed salamanders, north western salamanders, and ensatina salamanders.  They all have damp skin and require a moist environment to live in, much as frogs do.  Woodland salamanders, like ensatina, are terrestrial and do not live in water at all.  They even breed on land, but must live in a moist environment as they breathe through their skin.  Other salamanders, like the north western ones, are highly aquatic and are rarely found outside of wet ecosystems.  Then there are the rough-skinned newts.

They have relatively dry skin and spend most of their adult lives on land.  They will also come out during the day during relatively dry periods, unlike most of their kin.  They do, however, need water to reproduce.  Salamanders living in Canada breed early in the spring, often with the ice not even off the water yet.  The young are generically referred to as larvae, as in the larval form, but newts have a peculiar and specialized name given to them.  Efts are the terrestrial larval form, not yet adults but also not still aquatic larvae.  

Another interesting aspect to rough-skinned newts is how toxic their skin is.  Most amphibians have toxins associated with at least some aspect of their skin, usually in the adult but sometimes in the larvae too.  The rough-skinned newt has especially toxic skin.  It is estimated that the skin on one newt contains enough poison to kill some 50,000 mice.  The toxin is tetrodotoxin, an agent that blocks nerve signals, and often results in the death of anything affected.  Garter snakes seem to have evolved a resistance to the toxin though and can eat the newts without affect.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com