Giant salamander sounds like a baby, so it is called giant salamander. Its moving organ is not fins, but short limbs, and its skin is bare and scaleless. The whole body is brown, with dark stripes on the back, shallow abdomen, flat and wide head, big mouth, and many fine teeth arranged on the upper and lower jaws; Eyes are small, located at the back of the head, with a big flat tail, which looks a bit like a gecko crawling on the wall. The larvae of giant salamander live completely in water, breathing through gills, while adults live in water and often surface, mainly breathing through lungs, and can also climb to land to live. When it swims in the water, its limbs cling to the sides of its body to reduce the water resistance. It mainly relies on the constant swinging of its tail and trunk to move its body forward. When moving underwater, the abdomen sticks to the ground at the bottom of the stream, the hind legs push the body forward, and the forelimbs are used to change the direction of the body movement.
Giant salamanders live in clear and swift streams in mountainous areas, usually hiding in crevices or caves in mountain streams, with their heads facing outwards and their tails facing inwards, which is conducive to finding food and enemies in time. Giant salamanders feed on small fish, crabs and earthworms, and can also prey on frogs, snakes and other animals, which is rare among amphibians. Therefore, it is considered to be the fiercest member of amphibians. Because the giant salamander has undeveloped eyes and is afraid of light, it usually hides in caves during the day and comes out for food at night. In order to get food, it sometimes crawls ashore and waits motionless. At this time, if a frog comes, the giant salamander immediately pounces on it and swallows its prey in the blink of an eye. It's a delicious meal. In addition, it often forages in the flowing water at the mouth of the beach, waiting with its mouth open, and devouring small animals falling with the water.
The giant salamander is 5 years old and breeds once a year. From late August to early September, it is the spawning period of giant salamanders, with more than 300 eggs, up to 2 100. The egg of giant salamander is round, and there is peritoneum outside the egg to form an egg belt. When the water temperature is 18 ~ 22℃, the fertilized eggs can hatch into giant salamander seedlings in about 45 days.
Giant salamander is also a food animal. Its meat is tender and delicious, and its meat and skin can be used as medicine to treat anemia and madness. Giant salamanders are widely distributed and can be found in Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hebei, Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces. However, due to a large number of overfishing, the giant salamander is also in danger of extinction. In recent years, Hunan, Shaanxi and other places have established giant salamander nature reserves, which has increased the number of giant salamanders.