EXPRESS-NEWS (San Antonio, Texas) 24 November 06 Zoo hopes for the best with mucus-covered salamanders (Lisa Marie Gómez)

Many of the exhibits at the San Antonio Zoo are filled with cute, furry animals that make visitors smile and sometimes want to take them home.

The Japanese giant salamander, however, isn't one of them.

In fact, with a body covered in mucus, it's downright gross.

At least that's what 8-year-old Brittanie Cruz thinks.

"Oooh, it's slimy and ugly," she said, giggling Monday as she peered through the glass of the zoo's newest exhibit, which opened about three weeks ago.

Zoo curators are hoping to do more than just showcase their salamanders, which are listed as near threatened on the World Conservation Union's endangered species list. The curators are hoping their salamanders will breed now that they're living in an environment that more closely resembles their natural habitat.

But that's a tall order for cupid, given that none of the five zoos in North America that have Japanese giant salamanders have ever been successful in breeding them, according to zoo officials.

"The only successful zoo in the world where they have been bred was at the Asa Zoological Park in Hiroshima," Japan, said Sal Scibetta, a reptile and amphibian zookeeper at the San Antonio Zoo.

That's because the salamanders there swim through a natural cold mountain stream that happens to flow through the zoo, where they live and breed in the wild.

The river that flows through San Antonio's zoo doesn't come close to resembling the one in Japan, so the same exhibit couldn't be duplicated here.

The salamanders, which can weigh up to 55 pounds and measure 5 feet, made the list of animals needing protection because they have been hunted for food and are losing their natural habitat due to deforestation.

The salamanders at the San Antonio Zoo, with their wrinkled pink, brown and black lizard-like bodies, now swim in an exhibit filled with river rocks and breeding caves with water that is kept at 61 degrees.

"One of the biggest problems we have in trying to breed them is that we don't know what their environmental cues are," Scibetta said.

In late August and into the fall, female salamanders typically lay from 400 to 500 eggs, which may be fertilized by several males who then protect the nest site until the offspring hatch in the early spring.

In the new salamander exhibit, which has two females and two males, zookeepers built two makeshift nesting sites in hopes that the females would lay eggs. So far, it hasn't happened.

"It's only been a few weeks — we need to give them time to adjust to their new environment and hopefully they'll get comfortable enough to breed," Scibetta said.
Zoo hopes for the best with mucus-covered salamanders

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