Amphibia · Caudata
Salamandra salamandraLinnaeus, 1758
Fire salamander
Photograph by Juan Cruzado Cortés, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling salamander reaching 280 mm nose to tail.
Also called Common Fire Salamander, European Salamander, Fire Salamander.
Once published as Salamandra longirostris — those names reach this page.
Amphibia › Caudata › Salamandridae › Salamandra
- Grows to
- 280mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Crepuscular, diurnal, nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 24years
- Lives
- Terrestrial
Longer than 96% 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
21 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
- Vulnerable
- Population trend
- Decreasing
as reported by the IUCN Red List
The animal itself
- Longest recorded life
- 24years
Size
- Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- 106.6mm4.25 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 280mm11 in
- Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- 177.4mm7 in
- Body mass · greatestmeasured
- 35.8g1.3 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 19.1g0.67 oz
mean adult male snout-to-vent length
total length, tail included — this source reports total length for Caudata and Gymnophiona
mean adult male total length, tail included
maximum adult body mass as recorded in the source
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Eats arthropods
- Unknown
- Eats vertebrates
- Unknown
- Eats plant matter
- Unknown
- Active
- Crepuscular, diurnal, nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 40
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 8–54eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Mature at
- 3–4years
midpoint of the reported range — Rafaelli, 2022. Salamanders and Newts of the World. Plumelec: Penclen Edition, 1100 p.
Naming and history
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1758
Keeping one
Fire salamander is assessed as Vulnerable 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.
- Land
- 224 × 112cm
- Water, at least 56 cm deep
- 56 × 112cm
Minimum, and for two animals — which is how the standard states it. Bigger is always better. Around 112 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 56 × 56 cm of land and 28 × 28 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 11 in (280 mm) — how this is worked out.
Fire salamander
Feeding
5kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 36 g, the heaviest recorded for Fire 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
1 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 0 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- Skin colourpeer reviewed
- Skin colour in salamanders is modulated by both epitranscriptomic methylation and gene expression. — Mol Ecol 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 female mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — 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 · 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 salamandra. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/salamandra-salamandra
@misc{salamandra_salamandra_2026,
title = {Salamandra salamandra},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/salamandra-salamandra}
}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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.