Its been an interesting day, with caudates with lost appendages

Hi all,

So today on another herping trip I found two caudates ( and then three more while walking back to the house, funny how that works :frog.
But it was probably the weirdest one in a while. The two I found while actually looking in the woods were both missing appendages! And I felt especially bad for the first one.

So the first on I found was a male A. gracile, but not a happy one I am sure. He was missing about half his tail! I felt so bad. I mean he'd probably rather loose a leg that half his tail! I mean all a male caudata has for manliness is his cloaca and his tail, and this guys missing half of it. If salamanders could laugh, I am sure this guy would practically get laughed out of the breeding grounds. Plus with only half a tail it would make it pretty hard to swim, compete with other males, and I doubt anybody will actually want to breed with him this year.

And the second was a female A. gracile, with a missing toe. Not nearly as big of a deal. But still, it makes me wonder how both of these salamanders lost their appendage in the first place? Weird?

I don't know, I just thought it was kind of weird, and wanted to share some pictures.

The first two are the male, second two are the female.

Enjoy! -Seth

Well, that's not really hard to figure out... the tail or fingertips were bitten off by a predator?

The tail maybe, but I cant figure out what would be small enough to bit off just a finger? Maybe when it was underground it was bitten/attacked by a shrew or something.

The one with the missing tail might just be a lucky survivor of a car "attack" ( a car might have ran over his tail ). Or maybe it was bitten off by a raccoon of something. Hard to say.

Could it have lost the toe to infection following an injury I wonder?

That could definitely be. I wonder how long it will take for it to grow back? And I wonder if one missing toe hampers it much at all? -Seth