Staying aquatic Tiger Salamander
Some animals never metamorphose and keep their gills for life, remaining aquatic like the closely related axolotl.
Why it happens
- Where it comes from
- This is not caused by a gene. It happens during the animal's own development, before it hatches.
- What that means for breeding
- It cannot be bred for, no pairing makes it more likely, and it does not pass to the offspring.
Offspring odds
No numbers for this one.
Staying aquatic is not inherited — it arises during development rather than from a gene, so it cannot be bred for and no pairing makes it more likely.
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 this rests on
Established by breeders through repeated crosses and recorded in community documentation, not by published genetics. That is how almost all morph inheritance is known — and it is worth saying rather than presenting it as laboratory fact.