Talk:Salamander/Archive 1

Basic info

Someone must add this !

Yes and they have two mechanisms for detecting the earth's magnetic field:

Redirect Urodela page to Salamander

How come no one ever noticed this? --75.62.5.73 07:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Reproduction

There's no mention whether salamanders lay eggs or give birth to live young. Could someone in the know please add info about that? 68.248.101.45 21:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

An image

(William M. Connolley 20:39, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)) I have uploaded

. I don't know anything about salamanders though (except they are pretty, rare and interesting!) so will leave it to a bio to add this to the page; or not.

Totally useless trivia

The Finnish plural partitive case for salamanteri (salamander) is salamantereita, which is also the same case for salamanner, meaning "secret continent". — JIP | Talk 13:23, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The stamp image

Isn't the use of the stamp to illustrate a salamander contrary to the fair use guidelines spelled out on the image's page? Mr D Logan 05:31, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Shmuzel

What happen's to this little guys in the winter time ? i read their cold bloded so does this mean they dont freeze ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.201.170.24 (talk) 15:45, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

life cycle

Should there be something about the salamander life cycle? How its like frogs where there is eggs/larvae/adult?

-Ravedave 17:35, 22 December 2005 (UTC) They live about 20 years. Some spend their life in water, others in and out of the water, and others spend their entire adult life on land.

Please Identify this Critter

I found a Salamander in my pool. It's been there for at least 3 days clingling to the tile just above the water line. Its body is brown striped and the tail is bright, almost flourescent, blue. It looks like he was designed specically for my pool because the body is the same shade of brown as the pool tile and the tail blends in with the blue water. I've been doing research on the internet but I can't find this particular species. My daughter wants to make a pet of it, what would it's favorite habitat consist of? What would we feed it?

Are you sure it isn't a Western Skink? The juveniles have bright blue tails (pic here). --liquidGhoul 04:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Are there any salamanders or newts which live in saltwater areas, or are they only in freshwater habitats?

First, it's a bad idea to keep wild animals, they can be dangerous and it's better for them to be free. Second, salamanders don't live in saltwater environments. Also, I don't know of any salamander with a blue tail, it's probably a kind of lizard known as the skink. Many skinks not only have blue tails, but also take readily to water. Dora Nichov 12:08, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

By the way, your herptile (reptiles and amphibians, we don't know if it was a lizard or a salamander) was NOT specially designed for your pool by nature, 'cause nature didn't make your pool. Both salamanders and skinks eat invertebrates. Dora Nichov 12:10, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Flamewalkers

Uh, I am not too up on WarCraft Lore, but I've played the game into the ground pre-Blackwing Lair. The Flamewalkers look a helluva lot like the WoW represenation of naga, and very little like salamanders- does anyone know of an in-game reference that somehow links the two?

And, uh, weren't there ACTUAL salamanders in Searing Gorge? Y'know, the ones you get scales from for the Dark Iron faction? I can't recall, was Engineering myself, and my WoW account isn't active presently, so I can't check... if anyone could look into that...

I can't say I have any idea what you are talking about, as the last Warcraft I player was Warcraft III, and I didn't get into story line and such. Anyway, they may have been called salamanders, but a salamander does not have scales. --liquidGhoul 09:52, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

My Salamader

My salamader's anme is booshae. WE caught he from the wild but we will be putting him back when it is warm enough for him. When we found him knew we had to help booshae. He was in a cicle huddling him self and looked frozen, we even thought he was dead untill my dad picked him up. So we took him home but we don't know what kind he is and what to feed him but of course we got him yesterday. He was in my brother's freind's screen area, he even had some broken screen around one of his fingers. He is Black with yellow spots and he has eyes that would blend in with a rock. And might i say he loves the water and to be rubbed, we always have washed hands before and after we touch him. He is already used to the family i known i will be sad when he leaves. My parents were thinking about getting him crikets or grasshoppers to get him.

This isn't a place to post personal experiences. Blue Mirage | Comment 05:52, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Citing of Farragut

The Comment Adm. David Glasgow Farragut, famous for proclaiming "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead", was nick-named Old Salamander for his great naval exploits during the Civil War. Torpedoes refer to ocean mines.
Can we get a cite or reference for this or I believe it should be removed.
Markco1 17:27, 16 November 2006 (UTC) Never mind I fixed it and created a wiki link to him.

According

to a cnn report, today, there is a study of salamander regrowth, to train human bodies to regrow, particularly regarding limbs, possibly otherwise as well.

Thank You.

[[ hopiakuta | [[ [[%c2%a1]] [[%c2%bf]] [[ %7e%7e%7e%7e ]] -]] 22:27, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Genus and Species

Q: Can somone put up the Genus and Species of the Salamander? That would be greatly appreciated, and doing it ASAP would help. Thank you!

A: There are hundreds, if not thousands of different salamander species. One example is Ambystoma maculatum.

Salamanders in popular culture

I've cleaned up and reformatted this section, but work still needs to be done with regard to cleaning up the individual bullet points and providing references to the historical points. If anyone can provide appropriate references, that would be very helpful.01:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)CH

Classification be moved above Myth/Pop?

Should the classification section/table be moved above the mythology and popular culture? How do other species pages do it? Steveprutz 17:57, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Wrong phylum?

According to the salamandra wikipedia page, and other web sources, it seems the phylum is chordata, not amphibia. 216.239.76.111 02:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge

Oppose; individual species can have separate articles, there's nothing wrong with that. This one is actually quite long compared to others that are only one line. Also it has been proposed to merge the article into the classification section, but the classification section isn't about individual species, so the merge could not been done without loosing essentially all of the information in the article Amphiuma pholeter. IronChris | (talk) 03:39, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

In fact, if you look at what it says under Wikipedia:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles#Criteria for inclusion, all species can have a separate article, so I'll just go ahead and remove the merger notice. IronChris | (talk) 03:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Oppose; If a "biology only" article is desired, it should be put it in Urodela. The name "salamander" is fundamentally intertwined with the mythology. "Salamander" is the name for a broad, popular, non-technical concept; "Urodela" is the name of the technical concept. The name chosen for the split "salamander (mythology)" is also inappropriate since it subsumes other subjects as well as mythology. Generally, I think the split idea is poorly thought out - how do you distinguish whether a popular culture use is referring to the technical biological aspect of salamanders or the traditional notion? The problem is that the mythological salamander is the same thing as the biological salamander; it's a continuous development since the time of Pliny. When Pliny talked about salamanders, he was talking about exactly the same thing we mean when we say "salamander" today. He had much less accurate information about them than we know now, but if you showed Pliny a salamander, he'd know exactly what it was. "Subject (less accurate information)" and "Subject (more accurate information)" is not in my opinion a reasonable dichotomy in wikipedia articles.

"(67 ) Thus, for instance, the salamander, an animal like a lizard in shape, and with a body starred all over, never comes out except during heavy showers, and disappears the moment it becomes fine. This animal is so intensely cold as to extinguish fire by its contact, in the same way as ice does. It spits forth a milky matter from its mouth; and whatever part of the human body is touched with this, all the hair falls off, and the part assumes the appearance of leprosy." Pliny - Natural History Ch. 86

"As to what the magicians say, that it is proof against fire, being, as they tell us, the only animal that has the property of extinguishing fire, if it had been true, it would have been made trial of at Rome long before this. Sextius says that the salamander, preserved in honey and taken with the food, after removing the intestines, head, and feet, acts as an aphrodisiac: he denies also that it has the property of extinguishing fire." Pliny - Natural History Ch. 23 (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plin.+Nat.+toc)

Factually wrong in many respects, yes, but a different topic, no. The split should be reverted. Tarchon 20:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I oppose the merger of Urodela and Salamander because the Order (Urodela) has more to it than just salamanders. That said, the lovely "Classification" section in this article belongs on the Urodela page.Estreya 14:56, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Fork Mythology / Zoology

I think it's time to fork this page. G Allegre 13:52, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The question would be, what would we do with the Popular Culture section? It seems to be a mix of zoological and mythological references. Grika Ⓣ 14:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I did it. It was fairly easy to distinguish the zoo- from the myth- ... all those that were not clearly one or the other I moved to Salamander (disambiguation). --Ant 19:08, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the split, this statement inserted to justify it is incorrect: "The mythical salamander is a lizard that makes its home in fires (whereas the real salamander is an amphibian)." If you look at the single most important primary source on medieval and ancient salamander ideas, Pliny, you'll see that he says a salamander is only "like a lizard in shape," i.e., not a lizard. It's also anachronistic to apply the modern concepts of "amphibian" and "reptile" to salamander material predating them. Some premodern authors did use the term "reptile" to describe salamanders, but in those contexts "reptile" means "something that crawls," (from the Latin verb repere, "to crawl") which is not in any way a mythical description but rather a biologically accurate characterization of their method of locomotion. This distinction between a "real" salamander and a "mythical" salamander is something you've created (and I suppose that makes it "original research"). I can sympathize with some editors' distaste for the quality of the mythology section, especially as it was a couple weeks ago, but jumbled and inaccurate descriptions of premodern salamander ideas don't make it a separate subject. Tarchon 21:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Hey there. Someone added a pronunciation, but it wasn't in IPA, and even to my non-native ears/eyes it looks not-quite-right. "Sa-la-mOOn-der". Shouldn't it be /sɑ.lɑ.ˈmɛən.dəɹ/ or /sɑ.lɑ.ˈmɑn.dəɹ/ and not /sɑ.lɑ.ˈmuːn.dəɹ/ as the ad hoc guide seemed to say? — Coren ^(talk) 13:44, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Closest relatives are caecilians?

Says this at the end of the first paragraph. I think that's wrong -- should be Anura (frogs/toads). Someone please verify. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.251.193.226 (talk) 09:03, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

About Ms. Sally Manda....

Her son was a big freakin' monster! Guess Who? (talk) 17:33, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Footnote

The following comment was left on the article page by User:99.238.77.166:

"last footnote doesn't work."

Bob the Wikipedian, the Tree of Life WikiDragon (talk) 16:06, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Identification help

I took this photo of (what I think is) a salamander in central Pennsylvania recently. It was in shallow water in Black Moshannon Creek (actually the lake in Black Moshannon State Park). Can it be identified from the picture? Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:48, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

It appears to be a red-spotted newt. (19:14, 25 July 2008 (UTC))

Thanks very much! Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:20, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

How do i catch a salamander?

• one of them found its way inside my house, currently in the basement, everytime i turn the light on, he fast scurries towards the nearest shade source.

why do they go after shade and how do i capture it to send it back outside? Murakumo-Elite (talk) 04:23, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• • I wish I knew...I was wondering this as well as one got into my house.76.187.190.10 (talk) 16:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure it is a salamander? It sounds more like a skink or gecko if it is fast. I would say the best way to catch it is to be patient and wait until it creeps from a hiding space, then nab it with a net or gloves. Also, animals move slower in colder temperatures. StevePrutz (talk) 16:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

From my experience, Geckos have spongy paws, this one has claws of sorts, verified as a skink, but what should I do about his intrusion? And this time, this is the second one and hes much bigger than the other one I found. 67.187.91.103 (talk) 22:16, 9 September 2009 (UTC) (I am Murakumo, I lack the login creds due to power supply failure)

What do salamanders eat?

I just caught a salamander and am keeping it for my grandson. I need to know what they eat.

It depends on what species of salamander: offhand, I'd recommend maybe an earthworm.--Mr Fink (talk) 22:52, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

you can't go wrong with bloodworms and other insect larvae. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougcard (talk • contribs) 21:40, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Here we use slugs. But guys - I don't know about where you are, but here they are a protected species, and you can't keep them as pets just because you found them. Arikk (talk) 22:39, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism

Is there any reason this page has been vandalised five times in the last 10 days? Who could have a grudge against salamanders? Other pages I watch don't seem to have this level of vandalism. But good work to those who reverted it, usually within 60 seconds. Arikk (talk) 19:49, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions for formatting references, etc

I suggest that we format references in this form:

• Names of authors as in "Dorit, R. L.; Walker, W. F.; Barnes, R. D."
• Access dates and other dates as in "2012-10-18"
• Book titles as in "Invertebrate Zoology"
• Article titles as in "Late Jurassic salamandroid from western Liaoning, China"

• Do we want to use British or American English? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:17, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Nice work, from what I've checked, aren't the references already in this format? Since the article is already in American English we better stick to it. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 11:53, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

They are mostly in this format because I have been reformatting them. There is a plan to bring this article to GA or higher. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:11, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Really, that would be nice. Won't it be a good idea to fill in the to-do list? -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:23, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Etymology of name

Our article states: "When placed into a fire, the salamander would attempt to escape from the log, lending to the belief that salamanders were created from flames — a belief that gave the creature its name." An offline reference is provided. However, that sentence does not clearly explain why the association between fire and salamanders "gave the creature its name", and the English Wiktionary's entry "salamander" says "From Old French salamandre, from Latin salamandra, from Ancient Greek σαλαμάνδρα, of uncertain origin", that is, no known connection to fire. This needs some clarification. — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:28, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Especially since said explanation is merely a repeating of the origin of the legend of the salamander's fire-surviving abilities, and is not an etymology of the name.--Mr Fink (talk) 15:14, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's my point exactly. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:39, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I removed the doubtful phrase. — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:49, 10 September 2013 (UTC)