Behavior
The spotted salamander usually makes its home in hardwood forest areas that have vernal pools. These pools are necessary for breeding. They cannot breed in most permanent pools because the fish inhabiting the pools would eat the salamander eggs and larvae. Spotted salamanders are fossorial, meaning that they spend most of their time underground. They rarely come above-ground, except after a rain or for foraging and breeding. During the winter, they hibernate underground, and are not seen again until breeding season in early March-May.
Ambystoma maculatum has several methods of defense, including hiding in burrows or leaf litter, autotomy of the tail, and a toxic milky liquid they excrete when perturbed. This secretion comes from large poison glands around the back and neck. If a predator of the spotted salamander manages to dismember a part of a leg, tail, or even parts of the brain/head, then it can grow back a new one, although this takes a massive amount of energy. The spotted salamander, like other salamanders show great regenerative abilities, even being able to regenerate limbs and parts of organs. As juveniles, they spend most of their time under the leaf litter near the bottom of the pools their eggs were laid in. The larvae tend to occupy refuges in vegetation and lower their activity in the presence of predators .
Read more about this topic: Spotted Salamander
Famous quotes containing the word behavior:
“The confusion of emotions with behavior causes no end of unnecessary trouble to both adults and children. Behavior can be commanded; emotions can’t. An adult can put controls on a child’s behavior—at least part of the time—but how do you put controls on what a child feels? An adult can impose controls on his own behavior—if he’s grown up—but how does he order what he feels?”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)
“To be told that our child’s behavior is “normal” offers little solace when our feelings are badly hurt, or when we worry that his actions are harmful at the moment or may be injurious to his future. It does not help me as a parent nor lessen my worries when my child drives carelessly, even dangerously, if I am told that this is “normal” behavior for children of his age. I’d much prefer him to deviate from the norm and be a cautious driver!”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)