Amphibia · Caudata
Ensatina eschscholtziiGray, 1850
Ensatina
Photograph by Caudatejake, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A nocturnal salamander reaching 149 mm nose to tail.
Amphibia › Caudata › Plethodontidae › Ensatina
- Grows to
- 149mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 15years
- Lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
Longer than 83% of all species in Plethodontidae 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 20 to 412 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
22 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
- 15years
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 149mm5.75 in
- Body mass · greatestmeasured
- 61g2.2 oz
total length, tail included — this source reports total length for Caudata and Gymnophiona
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, terrestrial
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- How the young develop
- Straight to a miniature adult
- Gestation or incubation
- 138days
- Average clutch
- 11
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 3–25eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Age at first breeding · female
- 1278days
- Mature at
- 2–3.5years
- Size at maturity
- 48–55mm2–2.25 in
AnAge rates this record "low"
an average — Houck, 1977. Life history patterns and reproductive biology of neotropical salamanders, pp. 43-72. In The Reproductive Biology of Amphibians. Springer, New York
Naming and history
- Described by
- Gray
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1850
Keeping one
No enclosure size is given here
Swiss law sets amphibian enclosure sizes family by family, and this family is not among the ones its table names. No figure is given rather than one borrowed from a different kind of animal.
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.
Feeding
8kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 61 g, the heaviest recorded for Ensatina — 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.
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 · 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
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · 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
- — Active in
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Plethodontidae
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). Ensatina eschscholtzii. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ensatina-eschscholtzii
@misc{ensatina_eschscholtzii_2026,
title = {Ensatina eschscholtzii},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ensatina-eschscholtzii}
}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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- 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.