Organ regeneration

Speaking to a guy who had a very dehydrated Salamandra that had developed secondary problems following re-hydration, "I put it on wet paper
towels and it regained all the water it had lost. For the first days it hardly moved. After 4-5 days it began to move normally." then came secondary problems!
I suggested that it could be suffering from renal misfunction/failure.
His reply was "If kidneys are damaged, shouldn't they be able to regenerate them?"

Regeneration can occur when certain body parts are cut off. I suspect that it does not occur of the organ is damaged on a small scale, but not removed. Also, regeneration takes weeks; the animal could die from lack of organ function before that.

I've heard people say that nearly any salamander organ can regenerate, but I think this may be a myth. More reliable information I have seen indicates that only certain body parts can regenerate, and I doubt that kidney is one of them.

Thanks Jen,
As I suspected, a really fascinating subject of which I know little about.

I fully agree with Jennifer. I have seen complete regeneration of limbs, but organs is something different...would be handy though if you are heavy drinker and you can just develop a new liver ;-)

Continuing this conversation, but bringing it down a level! perhaps Triturus can.....hence the expression "****** AS A NEWT."

This subject is close to my heart as can be seen by my Signature below.

Zebrafish have the ability to regenerate organs including the heart.
If the Salamanders organ was damaged on a small scale then.... Who knows?

I'm the guy and the sick salamander is one of my 3 years old bernardezi

I'll tell you all the story. What happened is that the salamander got stuck in between the water dish and the terrarium. When I found it was badly dehydrated. As Mike said problems came some days after when it shed its skin cos I think it caught a bacterial infection around its mouth and on the head which I suppose were the most damaged parts. However the inside of the mouth was all right.

What I've been doing for the last 3 days is:
in the morning I'm putting a powder used by humans to help wounds heal quiklier
in the evening I'm putting an antibiotic (gentamicyn)
I also used an antimicotic before starting with the other 2 medicines because fungi were beginning to develop. The white tufts infact were what made me notice something was going wrong in the recovery of the salamander.

I don't want to speak too soon but the infection around the mouth seems to be a bit better now. It is not eating but I think that's not suprising after what it's been through.

How would I be able to tell if it has kidney problems?

Mike Thanx for your help.

Hi Franceseco,
Be very careful using gentamycin as this drug is highly nephrotoxic (toxic for the kidneys), certainly in dehydrated animals.

Could it be toxic even if put on the mouth only externally?

How's the patient doing now Francesco?

It got worse and then died