Amphibia · Caudata
Ambystoma tigrinumGreen, 1825
Tiger Salamander
Photograph by Carla Isabel Ribeiro, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A salamander reaching 330 mm nose to tail.
Also called Eastern Tiger Salamander.
Amphibia › Caudata › Ambystomatidae › Ambystoma
- Grows to
- 330mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Diurnal, nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 25years
- Lives
- Aquatic, fossorial, terrestrial
Longer than 93% of all species in Ambystomatidae anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 88 to 340 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
23 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Population trend
- Stable
as reported by the IUCN Red List
The animal itself
- Longest recorded life
- 25years
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 330mm13 in
- Body mass · greatestmeasured
- 79g2.8 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 9.4g0.33 oz
total length, tail included — this source reports total length for Caudata and Gymnophiona
maximum adult body mass as recorded in the source
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Eats arthropods
- Yes
- Eats vertebrates
- Yes
- Eats plant matter
- Unknown
- Active
- Diurnal, nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Aquatic, fossorial, terrestrial
- Active in
- Wet and cold
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- How the young develop
- Through a larval stage
- Gestation or incubation
- 28days
- Average clutch
- 421
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 421–7000eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Hatchling length
- 2–3mm0.1–0.1 in
- Age at first breeding · female
- 1460days
the largest reported — Rafaelli, 2022. Salamanders and Newts of the World. Plumelec: Penclen Edition, 1100 p.
Naming and history
- Described by
- Green
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1825
Keeping one
- Land
- 264 × 132cm
- Water, at least 66 cm deep
- 66 × 132cm
Minimum, and for two animals — which is how the standard states it. Bigger is always better. Around 132 cm tall on average.
The standard gives 8 × 4 body lengths of land and 2 × 4 of water, for two animals.
For each further animal the standard asks for another 66 × 66 cm of land and 33 × 33 cm of water.
Swiss Tierschutzverordnung (TSchV), SR 455.1, Anhang 2, Tabelle 6 — legally binding minimum enclosure sizes for amphibians, given as multiples of total body length and stated for two animals.
From this animal’s own total length of 13 in (330 mm) — how this is worked out.
Tiger Salamander
Feeding
10kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 79 g, the heaviest recorded for Tiger Salamander — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
Morphs
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 2 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- Banding and colourbreeder consensus
How broad, how yellow and how connected the bars are over the dark ground. Follows the population an animal came from rather than a single gene.
- Staying aquaticbreeder consensus
Some animals never metamorphose and keep their gills for life, remaining aquatic like the closely related axolotl.
Worth knowing. Whether a tiger salamander transforms depends heavily on the conditions it is raised in — water temperature, quality, crowding and iodine — as well as on its ancestry. It is not a trait a pairing predicts, and an animal that has stayed aquatic may still transform later if conditions change.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Still living
- — Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- — Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Diet
- — How it hunts
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Venomous
- — Fangs
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Limbs
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Red List criteria
- — Region
- — Biome
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Suborder
- — Infraorder
- — Subspecies
- — Type locality
- — Habitat
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Ambystomatidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Ambystoma tigrinum. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ambystoma-tigrinum
@misc{ambystoma_tigrinum_2026,
title = {Ambystoma tigrinum},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ambystoma-tigrinum}
}Sources
- Oliveira, B.F. et al. (2017). AmphiBIO, a global database for amphibian ecological traits. Scientific Data 4:170123. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- GBIF Secretariat. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Used under CC BY 4.0. Common names aggregated from constituent checklists.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.