Fire Salamander (Salamandra salamandra): Facts and Habitat

Appearance: black with yellow spots or stripes

The fire salamander has a stout body, a broad rounded head, short sturdy legs and a thick tail. Its smooth, glossy skin is jet black with bright yellow spots, blotches or stripes. The amount of yellow varies enormously: some individuals are almost entirely black, while others are mostly yellow, and in some populations orange or red patches replace or mix with the yellow.

Each salamander’s pattern is unique and stays much the same throughout its life, so researchers can identify individuals from photographs. Behind the eyes sit two large, bulging glands called parotoid glands, and rows of smaller glands run down the back. Males and females look very similar, except in the breeding season, when the male’s vent area is noticeably swollen.

Size: one of Europe’s largest salamanders

Adults are usually 15–25 cm (6–10 in) long including the tail, which makes the fire salamander one of the largest land salamanders in Europe. A typical adult weighs around 40 g (1.4 oz). Females are often slightly larger and heavier than males.

Larvae are only about 2.5–3.5 cm (1–1.4 in) long when born and grow to roughly 5–7 cm (2–2.8 in) before they lose their gills and leave the water.

Habitat and range

Fire salamanders live in southern and central Europe, from Portugal and Spain through France, the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland and Italy east to Poland, Ukraine, Romania and the Balkans, including Greece. They are absent from Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia, and in the Netherlands they survive only in a few small sites in the far south.

Their favorite habitat is damp, hilly deciduous forest, especially beech and oak woods with plenty of leaf litter, moss, fallen logs and rocks. They need small, clean streams, springs or pools nearby, where females can release their larvae. Most live between about 250 and 1,000 m (820–3,300 ft) above sea level, but in the mountains of Spain and the Balkans they are found much higher.

By day they hide under logs, stones, roots and in rodent burrows or rock crevices, and they often return to the same shelters and hibernation sites for many years. Find out more in where fire salamanders live.

Diet and feeding

Fire salamanders are carnivores that eat small invertebrates found on the forest floor. Their diet includes slugs, earthworms, beetles and other insects, spiders, millipedes and centipedes. Large individuals occasionally eat newts or young frogs.

They hunt slowly, by sight and smell, mainly at night. When they spot prey, they lunge and catch it with their sticky tongue and small teeth. The larvae, which live in water, are also predators, feeding on aquatic insect larvae, small crustaceans and sometimes on each other.

Behavior: active on rainy nights

Fire salamanders are solitary and secretive. They are mostly nocturnal, leaving their shelters in the evening, but on rainy or misty days they may also walk about in daylight, which is when most people see them. They avoid dry, hot weather and become inactive during frosts.

In central Europe, they hibernate from about November to March in deep crevices, caves, old mines or rodent burrows, often in groups. In the hot, dry south of their range they may also stay hidden through the summer. Studies show that they are very faithful to their home ranges and can navigate back to known sites using landmarks. In one study, individuals returned to the same cave to hibernate for up to 20 years. This loyalty to particular places makes populations vulnerable when a forest is cut or a road is built through their range.

Skin toxins and warning colors

The fire salamander’s skin glands produce a mix of toxic steroid alkaloids, the most important of which is samandarin. These toxins affect the nervous system of vertebrates and make the salamander distasteful and dangerous to predators. The glands are concentrated behind the eyes and along the back, and they largely match the yellow areas of the skin.

When threatened, a fire salamander may arch its body to present its glands, and it can even squirt the milky secretion a short distance. Its bright colors are an honest warning, a strategy called aposematism, which teaches predators to avoid it. For details, see are fire salamanders poisonous?.

Reproduction, life cycle and lifespan

Fire salamanders mate on land, mostly in summer. The male finds a female, crawls beneath her and holds her front legs, then deposits a sperm packet called a spermatophore on the ground and maneuvers her over it. Fertilization is internal, and the female can store sperm for months before using it.

Unlike most amphibians, fire salamanders do not lay eggs in water. The eggs develop inside the mother, and in most populations she walks to the edge of a clear stream or pool, usually in spring, and releases fully formed larvae with feathery gills. A female typically produces a few dozen larvae, often about 20–40, although numbers vary widely.

The larvae live in the water for about three to six months, then lose their gills and move onto land as small salamanders. Some populations in northern Spain go further: there the young develop completely inside the mother and are born as tiny, fully formed salamanders, with no water stage at all. Young salamanders take about three to four years to mature.

Fire salamanders are remarkably long-lived. Wild adults often live 10–20 years or more, and in captivity they can live much longer. One fire salamander kept at the Museum Koenig in Bonn, Germany, lived for more than 50 years, one of the longest lifespans recorded for any salamander.

Subspecies and close relatives

Scientists recognize more than a dozen subspecies of the fire salamander, which differ in color pattern, size and breeding habits. The nominate subspecies S. s. salamandra, the spotted fire salamander, lives in central and southeastern Europe and usually has irregular yellow spots. The barred fire salamander, S. s. terrestris, of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and western Germany, tends to have its yellow arranged in two broken stripes along the back.

The Iberian Peninsula holds the greatest variety. Subspecies there include S. s. gallaica of Galicia and Portugal, S. s. bernardezi and S. s. fastuosa of northern Spain, which give birth to fully formed young, and S. s. morenica of the southern Spanish mountains. In Italy, S. s. gigliolii often shows large patches of yellow.

Several populations once counted as fire salamanders are now treated as separate species, based on genetic studies. They include the Corsican fire salamander (Salamandra corsica), the North African fire salamander (Salamandra algira) and the Near Eastern fire salamander (Salamandra infraimmaculata). The all-black alpine salamander (Salamandra atra) of the Alps is a close relative that has no larval stage in water at all. For the difference between salamanders and their pond-dwelling relatives, see newt vs salamander.

Predators and threats

Thanks to their toxins, adult fire salamanders have few predators. Larvae are much more vulnerable and are eaten by fish such as trout, by dragonfly larvae and other aquatic insects. Threats from people include:

• Bsal fungus. The chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), probably brought from East Asia through the pet trade, destroys the skin of fire salamanders and can kill them within one to two weeks. Since about 2010 it has caused a decline of around 96 percent in the Netherlands and severe losses in Belgium and western Germany.
• Habitat loss. Clearing of deciduous forests, conversion to conifer plantations and pollution or drying out of streams remove breeding and living sites.
• Roads. Salamanders migrating on rainy nights are often killed by traffic.
• Climate change. Hotter, drier summers and shrinking streams can reduce breeding success.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List classified the fire salamander as Vulnerable in 2023, up from Least Concern, with a decreasing population. The change reflects both the losses already caused by Bsal and the risk that the fungus will spread further across Europe.

Conservation work includes hygiene rules for fieldworkers to avoid moving the fungus on boots and equipment, captive “safety” populations of salamanders from infected areas, protection of forest streams, and restrictions on the trade in salamanders. The fire salamander is also legally protected in many European countries. Read more in why amphibians are declining.

Myths and facts

• Myth: salamanders can live in fire. Fact: they cannot. The legend probably began when salamanders hiding in logs scrambled out after the wood was thrown on a fire. See why they are called fire salamanders.
• Myth: a fire salamander is a lizard. Fact: it is an amphibian with moist, scaleless skin and no claws, and it needs water to breed.
• Myth: touching one will kill you. Fact: the toxins are dangerous if swallowed or rubbed into the eyes or mouth, but the animal is no threat if you simply watch it.