Gerrard Kaonga
Old Mother Nature loves to keep surprising us, as scientists confirm a suspicion held for decades about the Chinese giant salamander.
As the name would suggest, Chinese giant salamanders are pretty damn big and can grow up to 6.6 feet in length.
This size has cemented them as the largest amphibian in the world for a long time, but more recently, a new study has made quite the revelation.
Chinese giant salamanders have been considered just one species, but a paper published on October 3, in Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society, confirmed they actually consist of multiple unique species.
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The team behind the paper are hoping their findings are urgently recognized to ensure that conservation legislation adequately protects these animals.
Experts have warned that if action isn’t taken some of the Chinese giant salamander species could go extinct before they are officially recognized.
Professor Samuel Turvey, a researcher at ZSL’s Institute of Zoology and an author of the paper, spoke on this risk.
He said: “Chinese giant salamanders are recognized as Critically Endangered, mainly due to overexploitation of wild populations to support a salamander farming industry that stocks China’s luxury food market.
“All of the species we’ve now identified are thus at high risk of disappearing forever. If we are to avoid losing the world’s largest amphibians, we need to act urgently to ensure that these newly-recognized species are formally recognized and legally protected.”
It isn’t that scientists haven’t suspected there might be more to the giant amphibians, it is just now they have the significant data to support their claims.
Turvey continued: “The possibility that Chinese giant salamanders may not be a single species has been suggested by researchers for 20 years, but by comparing levels of genetic difference seen across giant salamander populations with differences shown by other known salamander species, we can now confirm this for sure.”
Conservation of the animals has actually become an issue due to the assumption that Chinese giant salamanders were all the same species.
This has meant that salamanders are moved between farms across China in habitats that the species would not normally be found in.
When they are intentionally released from farms back into rivers or accidentally escape, they risk invading habitats and disturbing the natural order of things.
As well as this, as the species are not separated in farms, there is a risk that different species will hybridize with each other, according to Turvey.
Only time will tell if this discovery leads to new legislation to protect and define the different species.