JAPAN TIMES (Tokyo) 09 December 09 U.S. zoo takes Japanese salamanders
Photo at URL below: Latest acquisition: An official of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington holds a box containing a Japanese giant salamander in Hiroshima on Thursday before the amphibian was shipped to the U.S. (Kyodo)
Hiroshima (Kyodo): Six rare and highly protected Japanese giant salamanders bred and raised at the Asa Zoological Park in the city of Hiroshima were sent last week to the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, according to officials of the two zoos.
The two 19-year-old females and four 11-year-olds — two males and two females — were all born at Asa, the only zoo in the world where the species has been successfully bred on a regular basis.
It marks the first time that Japan has sent any of the river-dwelling creatures, regarded here as a national treasure, to overseas zoos in more than a decade. A detailed contract was concluded between the two zoos in 2006 for the six salamanders.
"We're very excited about it," said Edward Bronikowski, the U.S. zoo's senior curator in animal programs, who visited Asa on Thursday with a Smithsonian veterinarian and observed the slimy animals as they underwent predeparture health checks.
The biggest is a 19-year-old female that is 93 cm long and weighs 5.8 kg. Japanese giant salamanders can grow to up to 150 cm in length and weigh more than 40 kg.
"We have a lovely exhibit set up for them right across from the giant pandas," Bronikowski said, referring to the zoo's centerpiece attraction.
Two of the six giant salamanders will be on public display in a large aquarium, set into rocks, which forms part of Asia Trail, a series of naturalistic exhibits that is also home to red pandas, sloth bears and clouded leopards.
The other four will be housed elsewhere in the zoo and utilized in a captive breeding program for Japanese giant salamanders, one of the first in the United States.
Bronikowski said the breeding facilities set up in the zoo's Reptile Discovery Center will be modeled on those at Asa, which in 1979 became the first Japanese zoo to breed the species in captivity.
Asa has bred them almost every year since then, using artificial facilities that imitate the natural habitat of the salamanders, with streams and nesting burrows hidden in the riverbank.
But the Smithsonian curator said one important distinction will be that the U.S. zoo will attempt to breed them indoors in a closed system. Asa's breeding aquariums are outdoors and utilize water supplied from a natural stream.
At the Washington zoo, the water in the enclosures will be kept below 15 degrees year-round and will mimic seasonal variations in river water temperature in Japan.
Bronikowski admitted this posed some "engineering challenges" for the zoo, especially when it came to keeping such a large volume of water as cool as a Japanese river in wintertime, but he said those challenges have been overcome.
"We are optimistic about breeding them," he said, noting that the zoo has already had considerable success in breeding other rare amphibians like the critically endangered Panamanian golden frog.
U.S. zoo takes Japanese salamanders

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