Great Crested Newt (Triturus cristatus): Facts and Protection

What does a great crested newt look like?

Great crested newts are dark brown to almost black on the back and sides, and their skin is rough and granular, which explains the old name “warty newt.” The flanks and the sides of the head are covered in fine white stippling, as if dusted with salt. Black spots are often visible on the back, although they can be hard to see against the dark background.

The belly is the most striking feature: bright yellow to orange, broken up by irregular black blotches. The throat is dark with yellow patches and white speckles. Each newt’s belly pattern is unique, like a fingerprint, so researchers photograph it to recognize individual animals from year to year.

In spring, males change dramatically. They grow a tall, deeply jagged crest along the back, up to about 1.5 cm (0.6 in) high, which breaks off at the base of the tail and is followed by a smoother crest along the tail. A broad silvery-white or bluish-white stripe runs along each side of the male’s tail, and his cloaca swells. Females never grow a crest; instead they have a yellow or orange stripe along the lower edge of the tail. On land, both sexes look drabber, with velvety, dry-looking skin. For a step-by-step guide, see how to identify a great crested newt.

How big is a great crested newt?

Most adults measure about 10–16 cm (4–6.3 in) from snout to tail tip, with females usually a little longer and heavier than males. Exceptional individuals approach 18–20 cm (7–8 in). Adults weigh only a few grams, roughly 5–12 g (0.2–0.4 oz). That makes them clearly larger than the smooth and palmate newts, which rarely exceed about 11 cm (4.3 in) and 9.5 cm (3.7 in).

Compared with its close relatives, the great crested newt is a fairly slender species. Only the Danube crested newt is more slender; the other crested newts of southern Europe are stockier.

Where do great crested newts live?

The great crested newt is the most widespread and most northerly of the seven crested newt species. Its range runs from Great Britain across northern France, the Low Countries, Germany, Denmark and southern Scandinavia to Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine and European Russia, reaching the Ural Mountains and western Siberia. It is absent from Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula and Italy, where other newts take its place.

It is mainly a lowland animal, although it has been found as high as 1,750 m (5,740 ft) in the Alps. Two kinds of habitat are needed close together. For breeding, it prefers medium to large ponds that are still, sunny, rich in underwater plants and free of fish. Many British breeding sites are human-made, including farm ponds, ditches, flooded quarries, gravel pits and occasionally garden ponds.

For the rest of the year it lives on land in deciduous woodland, hedgerows, scrub, rough grassland and overgrown quarries. During the day it hides under logs, stones, bark, old walls or in small mammal burrows. Read more in where do newts live?

What do great crested newts eat?

Great crested newts are carnivores that eat almost any small animal they can catch and swallow. On land they feed on earthworms, slugs, snails, woodlice, beetles and other insects and their larvae. In the pond they take water snails, small clams, water fleas and other small crustaceans, insect larvae, frog and toad tadpoles, and smaller newts, including their own kind.

The larvae are predators too. Small larvae catch water fleas and other tiny animals, while larger ones take insect larvae, tadpoles and smaller newt larvae. Adults hunt mostly at night, using sight and smell to find moving prey, and often feed more heavily in water during the breeding season, when food is plentiful.

Behavior through the year

Adult great crested newts spend around seven months of the year on land. In late winter or early spring, usually from February or March, they leave their winter shelters on mild, damp nights once temperatures stay above about 4–5 °C (39–41 °F) and walk back to their breeding ponds. Most adults return to the same pond every year.

In the water they are largely nocturnal and tend to stay in deeper parts of the pond, hiding among plants and rising to the surface to gulp air. After breeding, from about June to August, adults leave the pond and disperse into the surrounding land. They do not travel far: a newt can cover about 100 m (330 ft) in a night, and most stay within a few hundred meters of their pond, rarely moving more than 1 km (0.6 mi).

From around October or November they hibernate in frost-free places underground, among tree roots, rubble or mammal burrows, often several together. When threatened, a great crested newt may arch its body and roll up to show its orange belly as a warning, and it releases a milky, distasteful skin secretion.

Courtship and life cycle

Breeding takes place mainly in spring. Males gather at small open patches on the pond bottom that work as display arenas, or leks. A male courts a female by arching his body and fanning his tail to waft scent toward her. If she responds, he deposits a packet of sperm, a spermatophore, on the pond floor and guides her over it so she can pick it up with her cloaca.

Fertilization is internal. Over several weeks the female lays around 200 eggs, one at a time, and folds each egg inside the leaf of a water plant, a process that takes about five minutes per egg. The pale yellowish eggs are larger than those of other newts. Because of an unusual genetic quirk shared with other crested newts, about half of all embryos die before hatching.

The larvae hatch after two to five weeks, depending on water temperature. Unlike the larvae of smaller newts, they swim freely in open water. They breathe through feathery external gills, grow front legs before back legs, and metamorphose after two to four months, usually in late summer. The young newts, called efts, leave the water and live on land until they mature at two to three years old, or later in the cold north.

How long do great crested newts live?

Early life is extremely risky. Studies suggest that on average only about 4% of larvae survive from hatching to metamorphosis, and young efts face many predators too. Once a newt reaches adulthood, its chances improve greatly. Adults typically live about 7–9 years in the wild, and some marked individuals have lived to around 17 years.

Predators and threats

Fish are the most serious natural enemies of great crested newts because they eat the larvae; ponds stocked with fish rarely support successful breeding. Dragonfly nymphs, water beetles and water birds also eat larvae. Adults are taken by herons and other birds, by grass snakes, and by mammals such as shrews, badgers and hedgehogs, although their skin secretions deter many predators.

Human activity is a far bigger problem. The main threat is the loss and degradation of habitat: ponds filled in or drained for farming and building, and the woodland, hedgerows and rough grassland around them cleared or cut off by roads. Because newts move so little, isolated populations cannot easily recolonize new ponds. Other threats include fish and crayfish introduced into ponds, fertilizer and pesticide pollution, road salt, collection for the pet trade in eastern Europe, and milder, wetter winters.

In the Netherlands, introduced Italian crested newts have interbred with native great crested newts, diluting the local gene pool. Conservationists are also watching for Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, an introduced fungal disease that has caused severe declines in fire salamanders in parts of Europe and could affect newts.

Conservation status and legal protection

The IUCN Red List classifies the great crested newt as Least Concern because it has a very large range, but its population is decreasing and it appears on several national red lists. It is listed in Appendix II of the Bern Convention as strictly protected, and in Annexes II and IV of the EU Habitats Directive. This makes it a European protected species, and several Natura 2000 sites have been designated specifically for it.

Across most of Europe it is illegal to deliberately capture, kill or disturb the newts, to destroy their eggs, or to damage their breeding sites and resting places. In England and Wales this protection comes from the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 and the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Builders working near newt ponds usually need surveys and a license, and parts of England now use district-level licensing that pays for new ponds elsewhere. The details are explained in why are great crested newts protected?

Great crested newts and people

Strict legal protection has made the great crested newt one of the best-known amphibians in Britain, but also a controversial one, as surveys and licenses can add time and cost to building projects. Conservationists counter that the species is a flagship for ponds: protecting and digging ponds for crested newts also helps frogs, toads, dragonflies and water plants.

Creating new ponds works well when other occupied ponds are nearby, because newts quickly find and colonize them. In the UK, people should look but not touch: handling a great crested newt without a license is an offense. The word “newt” itself comes from Old English efte: “an ewt” gradually became “a newt,” while “eft” survives as the name for young newts on land. For how newts fit into the wider salamander family, see newt vs salamander.