What is salamander?

A salamander is a harmless creature that looks like a lizard, but it is related to the frogs and toads. Salamanders’ bodies and long tails make them look so much like lizards that they are often mistaken for them.  It is easy to tell them apart.  Lizards are covered with dry scales.

Salamander has smooth, shiny skin that always looks wet.  Salamanders are timid, harmless creature.  They love to live in streams and ponds, on land beneath stones and rotting logs where it is cool, dark and moist.

They live in a stream or a pond as tadpoles and breathe with gills like fish.  But when grown-up, they have  legs and come ashore and breathe air with lungs.  Salamanders have a special name because they start life in the water then crawl out onto land.  They are called “amphibians,” which means “leading a double life.”

There are many kinds of salamanders.  Mud puppies, newts, and hellbenders are the names of the few.  Not all salamander live a double life.   The mud puppies and hellbenders spend their entire life in the water.-Dick Rogers