Amphibia · Caudata
Andrias davidianusBlanchard, 1871
Chinese Giant Salamander
Photograph by Stefano Menchetti, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
A water-living, nocturnal salamander reaching 900 mm nose to tail.
Amphibia › Caudata › Cryptobranchidae › Andrias
- Grows to
- 900mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 19.9years
- Lives
- Aquatic
What is known
25 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
- Critically Endangered
- Population trend
- Decreasing
as reported by the IUCN Red List
The animal itself
- Longest recorded life
- 19.9years
Size
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 383mm15 in
- Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- 532.5mm21 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 900mm2 ft 11 in
- Female length · mean, nose to tail
- 582.1mm23 in
- Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- 834.4mm2 ft 9 in
- Body mass · greatestmeasured
- 4100g9 lb
mean adult female snout-to-vent length
mean adult male snout-to-vent length
total length, tail included — this source reports total length for Caudata and Gymnophiona
mean adult female total length, tail included
mean adult male total length, tail included
maximum adult body mass as recorded in the source
How it lives
- Eats arthropods
- Unknown
- Eats vertebrates
- Unknown
- Eats plant matter
- Unknown
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Aquatic
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- How the young develop
- Through a larval stage
- Gestation or incubation
- 55days
- Average clutch
- 350
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 300–600eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Hatchling length
- 5–9mm0.2–0.4 in
- Size at maturity
- 100mm
AnAge rates this record "low"
an average — Browne, Li, Wang, Okada, Hime, McMillan, Wu, Diaz, McGinnity, and Briggler, 2014, Amphib. Reptil. Conserv., 5:30-50
Naming and history
- Described by
- Blanchard
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1871
Keeping one
Chinese Giant Salamander is assessed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.
Swiss law requires a permit under Article 89 to keep this animal privately. Rules differ by country — check what applies where you are before acquiring one.
- Water, at least 45 cm deep
- 270 × 180cm
Minimum, and for two animals — which is how the standard states it. Bigger is always better.
This animal lives in water, so the standard gives 3 × 2 body lengths of water and no land area, for two animals.
For each further animal, another 270 × 180 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 2 ft 11 in (900 mm) — how this is worked out.
Chinese Giant Salamander
Feeding
319kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 4,100 g, the heaviest recorded for Chinese Giant 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
2 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 0 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- Albinismpeer reviewed
- Coordinated microRNA/mRNA expression profiles reveal unique skin color regulatory mechanisms in Chinese Giant Salamander (Andrias davidianus). — Animals (Basel) 2023
- Skin colourpeer reviewed
- A transcriptome analysis revealing the molecular mechanism of light intensity-driven color variation in the skin of Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus). — BMC Genomics 2026
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 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 · a typical adult
- — 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
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest 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
- — Active in
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Cryptobranchidae
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). Andrias davidianus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/andrias-davidianus
@misc{andrias_davidianus_2026,
title = {Andrias davidianus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/andrias-davidianus}
}Sources
- 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.
- Oliveira, B.F. et al. (2017). AmphiBIO, a global database for amphibian ecological traits. Scientific Data 4:170123. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- 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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- Huang, N. et al. (2023). Amphibian traits database: a global database on morphological traits of amphibians. Global Ecology and Biogeography 32, 633-641. Used under CC BY 4.0.