Amphibia · Caudata
Salamandra atraLaurenti, 1768
Black Salamander
Photograph by desertnaturalist, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A nocturnal salamander reaching 150 mm nose to tail.
Also called Alpine Salamander, Alpine salamander, Black Alpine Salamander.
Amphibia › Caudata › Salamandridae › Salamandra
- Grows to
- 150mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 17years
- Lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
Longer than only 42% of all salamanders 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 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
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
- Decreasing
as reported by the IUCN Red List
The animal itself
- Longest recorded life
- 17years
Size
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 59.6mm2.25 in
- Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- 58.2mm2.25 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 150mm6 in
- Female length · mean, nose to tail
- 107.9mm4.25 in
- Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- 107.7mm4.25 in
- Body mass · greatestmeasured
- 8.2g0.29 oz
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, terrestrial
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 30.5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 11–50eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Mature at
- 3years
midpoint of the reported range — Oliveira, São-Pedro, Santos-Barrera, Penone, and Costa, 2017, Sci. Data, 4:170123
Naming and history
- Described by
- Laurenti
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1768
Keeping one
- Land
- 120 × 60cm
- Water, at least 30 cm deep
- 30 × 60cm
Minimum, and for two animals — which is how the standard states it. Bigger is always better. Around 60 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 30 × 30 cm of land and 15 × 15 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 6 in (150 mm) — how this is worked out.
Black Salamander
Feeding
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 8 g, the heaviest recorded for Black 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.
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
- — How the young develop
- — 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
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — 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). Salamandra atra. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/salamandra-atra
@misc{salamandra_atra_2026,
title = {Salamandra atra},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/salamandra-atra}
}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.
- 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.
- 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.