If lately you’ve found yourself leaving no stone unturned, it could be that you’re a very thorough and exacting individual. Or maybe, like some of us here at the park district, you’ve just finished a week of Reptile and Amphibian Camp.
Also known as Herp Camp, this program focuses on the scaly and smooth-skinned critters that give some of us thrills, while others just get chills. Over the past week our group of 12 intrepid campers, ages 7-11, has turned over just about every stone, log, boulder, board and strip of bark we could find in the natural area at West Side Community Park (and, even more important, turned them back when we were through so as to not to destroy habitat). We’ve found American toads—21 one day, 32 the next—and western chorus frogs—a total of 11. We’ve looked at snapping turtle eggs and fox snake eggs. And, on one memorable day, we found the animal that a few years back was named the state amphibian of Illinois: the tiger salamander, Ambystoma tigrinum.
I’d always heard that the genus name Ambystoma means blunt mouth, and that description certainly fits. Members of this genus have broad heads with wide mouths that look almost like they’re smiling at you. But lately I’ve also been hearing that Ambystoma was derived from another Latin word that means “to cram into the mouth.” That image fits as well—especially if the sally has come upon an extra large, extra juicy nightcrawler or cricket.
The individual we found was young and plump—it had no doubt been doing its share of cramming, both as an aquatic larva and in its new life on land. The tiger salamander, like most members of the order Caudata, spends the first few months of its life in water, breathing through feathery gills and eating all the insects and other water creatures it can get its blunt mouth around. At this stage, it looks a bit like a tadpole, but has four legs of approximately the same size, as well as those prominent gills that look like a big clown collar around its neck.
As it matures, the salamander’s gills give way to lungs; when the time is right, the little creature makes its way up onto the land and, soon, under the ground. Ambystoma sallies belong to a family known as the mole salamanders and, like their namesake mammal, dig impressive tunnels from which they rarely venture.
“Our” tiger salamander was found inside a decomposing log, tucked safely within a soft bed of damp wood particles. We could tell it was young by its lack of spots. Fully mature tiger salamanders are marked with yellow or olive stripes that spread as the individual ages; younger tigers have spots in an irregular pattern across their back and tail. But if they’re really young, as in just recently crawled out of the pond, they have no spots at all. That’s the stage our critter was in.
For most of the kids in the camp, this was the first “wild” tiger salamander they’d ever encountered. For me, it was maybe the fourth or fifth, and certainly the most recent tiger I’d seen. And that got me to thinking.
Whenever we hold adult classes on herps in general or amphibians in particular, invariably someone will say that they “used to see” salamanders all the time. Then someone else will pipe in with how they “used to find” salamanders in their window wells. But invariably the conversation will devolve into how we “never see them anymore.”
Is this because tigers are harder to find than they used to be? This hypothesis might hold water, given that we have only a fraction of the wetlands we used to. Or could it be because, as adults, people are generally less inclined to turn over rocks and logs looking for critters like salamanders? This guess may be valid too—I sure didn’t see any other grownups joining us at WSCP during our herping adventures.
To answer this question in a wholly unscientific way, I have a favor to ask. If you happen to have run into a tiger salamander recently, could you send a quick email or make a quick call to let me know? The St. Charles Park District is the coordinating agency in Kane County for the Chicago Wilderness Habitat Project’s Calling Frog Survey, but we really don’t have a good handle on what the numbers for salamanders—the silent amphibians—are like.
Your input would be greatly appreciated. Go ahead—leave no stone unturned. Just be sure to put it back when you’re done!
Pam Otto is the manager of nature programs and interpretive services for the St. Charles Park District. She can be reached at potto@stcparks.org or 630-513-4346.