Chinese Giant Salamander (Andrias davidianus): Facts and Size

What does a Chinese giant salamander look like?

The Chinese giant salamander has a long, heavy, flattened body, a broad, flat head and a wide mouth that stretches almost the width of the head. Its tiny eyes have no eyelids and sit on top of the head. Short, sturdy legs carry four toes on the front feet and five on the hind feet, and a deep, flattened tail makes up more than half of the body length.

The skin is thick, wrinkled and slimy, with loose folds along the sides of the body. Paired tubercles, small bumps, run in lines around the head and throat. Most animals are dark brown, gray or blackish with irregular darker mottling, which camouflages them against stones and mud on the streambed. Rare albino animals, white or orange, have been recorded.

Adults have no external gills. Like its close relative the hellbender, the Chinese giant salamander takes in much of its oxygen through its skin, and the skin folds increase the area available for breathing. It also has lungs and can rise to the surface to gulp air.

How big is the Chinese giant salamander?

The Chinese giant salamander and its close relatives are the largest amphibians alive. Most adults seen in recent decades measure roughly 0.6–1.2 m (2–4 ft), with an often quoted average of around 1 m (3.3 ft). Historical records describe animals of up to about 1.8 m (5.9 ft), and the heaviest reported individuals weighed 50 kg (110 lb) or more.

Very large animals are now rare in the wild, because big salamanders were the first to be caught. Some of the largest historical specimens, such as a 1.8 m animal from Guizhou Province, may actually have belonged to the South China giant salamander (Andrias sligoi). The full comparison with other big amphibians is in What is the largest amphibian?

Habitat and range

Chinese giant salamanders live in cool, clear, fast-flowing streams in hilly and mountainous country, usually in forested areas. Most records come from altitudes of about 300–800 m (1,000–2,600 ft), though they occur from around 100 m to 1,500 m (330–4,900 ft). They favor fairly small, rocky streams about 1 m (3 ft) deep with plenty of crevices, caves and undercut banks to hide in, and they also live in some underground rivers.

Historically, giant salamanders were found across a large part of central, southwestern and southern China, in the basins of the Yangtze, Yellow and Pearl Rivers. Since the species was split, Andrias davidianus in the strict sense refers mainly to the Yangtze River lineage. Large-scale farming and release have moved animals far beyond their original rivers, so the natural range is now hard to map. Chinese giant salamanders have also been introduced to Kyoto Prefecture in Japan, where they hybridize with the native Japanese giant salamander.

What does the Chinese giant salamander eat?

The Chinese giant salamander is a carnivorous ambush predator. Its diet includes freshwater crabs, shrimp, fish, frogs, other salamanders, insects, millipedes, worms and even water shrews. Cannibalism is common, and in one study other giant salamanders made up a large share of the total food weight eaten.

It hunts mainly from dusk into the night. Its eyesight is very poor, so it relies on a line of sensory nodes along the head and body that detect tiny vibrations in the water. When prey comes close, the salamander suddenly gapes its huge mouth, creating a rush of water that sucks the prey in. Its bite is strong, and it can swallow large items such as whole crabs.

Giant salamanders have a slow metabolism and can go for long periods without eating. Feeding slows when water warms above about 20 °C (68 °F), and temperatures near 35 °C (95 °F) are fatal, which makes the species sensitive to warming streams.

Behavior and calls

Chinese giant salamanders are solitary, sedentary and territorial. Each animal holds a small core territory within a larger home range in its stream, and fights between intruders can cause serious injuries. Most of the day is spent hidden in a crevice or burrow along the bank.

They are unusually vocal for salamanders, producing barks, hisses, whines and cries. Some calls resemble the crying of a young child, which gave the animal its Chinese name wawayu, meaning “infant fish” or “baby fish.” When disturbed, they also release a sticky, white skin secretion with a strong smell that discourages predators.

Reproduction and life cycle

Breeding takes place from about July to September, when the water reaches around 20 °C (68 °F). Males claim underwater caves or burrows as nests and clean them by pushing out sand and gravel. Courtship involves a range of behaviors, from belly knocking and side-by-side swimming to the pair living together in the den.

The female lays a clutch of roughly 300–560 eggs in long strings inside the nest, and the male fertilizes them externally. The male, known as the “den master,” then guards the eggs for about 50–60 days, fanning them with his tail to keep oxygen-rich water flowing and removing infected or unfertilized eggs.

Larvae hatch at about 3 cm (1.2 in) long with feathery external gills. They gradually lose the gills over the following two to three years. Young salamanders reach maturity at about 5–6 years old, at a length of about 40–50 cm (16–20 in), and continue to grow throughout their lives.

How long do Chinese giant salamanders live?

The maximum lifespan of the Chinese giant salamander is not reliably known. Captive animals are widely reported to have lived more than 50 years, and some sources suggest 60 years or more, but well-documented records are scarce. Claims of salamanders that are hundreds of years old are not credible. The best documented giant salamander record belongs to a Japanese giant salamander kept in the Netherlands for about 52 years. The details are in How long do giant salamanders live?

Threats and conservation status

The IUCN Red List classifies the Chinese giant salamander as Critically Endangered, with a decreasing population. Once common across much of China, wild numbers are estimated to have fallen by more than 80 percent since the 1950s. The species is protected under Chinese law and listed on Appendix I of CITES, which bans international commercial trade.

Overharvesting is the main threat. Giant salamander meat is a luxury food in China, and wild animals have long been caught for the table and to stock farms. Dams, mining, siltation and pollution have degraded many of the clear mountain streams the salamanders need, and ranavirus disease has killed many animals on farms and in the wild.

Farming adds another problem. By the 2010s, millions of giant salamanders were kept on farms, far more than the remaining wild population. Many farmed animals come from one genetic lineage, and well-meant releases have mixed lineages that had been separate for millions of years. A nationwide survey from 2013 to 2016 found wild populations critically depleted or wiped out across all areas surveyed, as described in Is the Chinese giant salamander extinct?

Chinese giant salamanders and people

People in China have known giant salamanders for centuries, and the animals appear in traditional medicine and as a prized food. Today the salamander is also a national conservation symbol, and more than a dozen nature reserves have been set up in its range since the 1980s. Some older dams have been fitted with ramps or steps so that salamanders can move up and down streams.

Outside China, Chinese giant salamanders can be seen in a small number of zoos and aquariums in Europe, North America and Japan. ZSL London Zoo cares for animals that were seized from an illegal shipment in 2016, and Prague Zoo keeps one of the largest individuals in Europe, measuring about 1.5 m (5 ft). Zoo programs help with research on breeding, disease and genetics, which is essential for any future reintroductions using pure lineages.

One species or several?

For most of the 20th century, all giant salamanders in China were treated as a single species. Genetic studies published in 2018 and 2019 found several deeply separate lineages, some of which split millions of years ago. The South China giant salamander (Andrias sligoi), first described in 1924 from an animal at London Zoo, was revived as a separate species in 2019, and further species, including the Jiangxi giant salamander (Andrias jiangxiensis) and the Qimen giant salamander (Andrias cheni), have been described since.

This matters for conservation, because each species now has a smaller range and is even more threatened than the old, combined species seemed to be. Giant salamanders belong to an ancient family, the Cryptobranchidae, whose fossil record reaches back to the Jurassic, and they are often called living fossils. Their decline is part of a wider crisis explained in Why are amphibians declining?