All Angles Creatures
Caudata · SalamandridaeEntry 14,755 of 21,572
Tsitou Newt, Pachytriton brevipes

Amphibia · Caudata

Pachytriton brevipesSauvage, 1876

Tsitou Newt

Photograph by Zhang Xiaojie, CC BY, via iNaturalist

A water-living, nocturnal salamander reaching 193 mm nose to tail.

Also called Black-spotted Stout Newt, Paddle-tailed Newt.

AmphibiaCaudataSalamandridaePachytriton

Grows to
193mm
greatest recorded
Active
Nocturnal
Lives up to
6.5years
Lives
Aquatic
Body length across Salamandridae

Longer than 81% of all salamanders anyone has measured.

81% of 98 species are smaller19% larger
60 mmthe whole family, smallest to largest324 mm

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 60 to 324 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

19 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
Decreasing

as reported by the IUCN Red List

The animal itself

Longest recorded life
6.5years

Size

Length snout to vent · adult male mean
87.6mm3.5 in

mean adult male snout-to-vent length

Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
193mm7.5 in

total length, tail included — this source reports total length for Caudata and Gymnophiona

How it lives

Eats arthropods
Unknown

a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent

Eats vertebrates
Unknown
Eats plant matter
Unknown
Active
Nocturnal
Where it lives
Aquatic

Breeding

Reproduction
Oviparous
How the young develop
Through a larval stage
Average clutch
45

midpoint of the reported range — Oliveira, São-Pedro, Santos-Barrera, Penone, and Costa, 2017, Sci. Data, 4:170123

Eggs or young per clutch
30–60eggs
Clutches in a year
1per year
Hatchling length
3.5mm

Naming and history

Described by
Sauvage
Moved to another genus · since it was first described
Yes
Described in
1876

Keeping one

Land
97 × 97cm
Water, at least 77 cm deep
193 × 77cm

Minimum, and for two animals — which is how the standard states it. Bigger is always better. Around 77 cm tall on average.

The standard gives 5 × 5 body lengths of land and 10 × 4 of water, for two animals.

For each further animal the standard asks for another 39 × 39 cm of land and 58 × 58 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 7.5 in (193 mm) — how this is worked out.

Tsitou Newt

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 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 · greatest
  • 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
  • Gestation or incubation
  • 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
  • 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
  • Active in
  • Mainland or island
  • Lowest it lives · above sea level
  • Highest it lives · above sea level
  • Range size

Others in Salamandridae

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). Pachytriton brevipes. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pachytriton-brevipes

@misc{pachytriton_brevipes_2026,
  title  = {Pachytriton brevipes},
  author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pachytriton-brevipes}
}

Sources

  1. 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.
  2. Oliveira, B.F. et al. (2017). AmphiBIO, a global database for amphibian ecological traits. Scientific Data 4:170123. Used under CC BY 4.0.
  3. GBIF Secretariat. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Used under CC BY 4.0. Common names aggregated from constituent checklists.
  4. Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
  5. 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.