Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I asked this question a while back in the morph forum, but nobody's responded. This seems to be a much more effective forum!

I found this little critter in August in my mailbox (clearly some neighborhood kid thought it would be funny!). The postwoman came running up my front steps with a petrified look on her face, and when I answered the door, she gasped "There's a lizard in your mailbox!" It is now happily hanging out in an aquarium on my kitchen counter.

I feed him crickets which have been fed Fluker's High Calcium Cricket feed. When it was warmer, we also threw in roly-poly bugs and whatever else I could catch in the yard. I use gravel as the substrate in his acquarium, and also have some of that Amphibian Moss stuff in there. One end of the acquarium is lower than the other, and I keep that end under water. The salamander likes to hide in the moss. I also have a few more cave-like hiding places for it, but it seems to spend most of its time out in the open.

I'm having a blast with it. Its like your own personal T-rex at feeding time! My dogs think I am a little nuts, talking to an acquarium all the time, but what the heck!

Hello! Males have a larger "cloaca" than females---for all this and other useful info, click on this:

http://www.caudata.org/caudatecentral/articles/articles.html

It also has a section there about the type of substrate and you might want to replace your gravel with topsoil, since your salamander will love to burrow in it, more than gravel.

You'll have to report if it's a he or she and what you named the little feller!

Cute! I never have been able to tell what mine is, either, so I decided Jaws is a "he." Don't ask me why!
I agree you should consider replacing the gravel with some dirt, or Jungle Mix or something similar that he can dig in. They live underground and although Jaws does seem to spend a lot of his time out where he can see the world (and possibly food) go by, every once in a while he likes to burrow and cover up completely.

Does yours take worms, etc. from your fingers? If not, I bet he does real soon. Have fun!

its easier to tell the difference when you have a couple to compare, in the breeding season the males have swollen cloaca's that are more round in shape where as the females are more cone shaped, also the females are larger and generally broader. The one you have pictured looks like a male, but also looks like it may have just transformed in which case its difficult to tell