Strange looking Chinese newt.

I found this picture while surfing, it's advertised as Cynops/Hypselotriton fudingensis, but doesn't look like any of the other pictures of that species I have. Is it just an aberrant colour morph, or something else?

I believe it's a mega rare colour morph. I know someone who bought a cynops orientalist that looked similar

It's really pretty!

It is, I wish I could read Japanese for more details. I know the Japanese seem to be producing sporadic numbers of C. pyrrhos in various shades of red/blue/purple for the Japanese pet trade, but they never make it out to the wider market. I know this one isn't a pyrrho, mind you.

It is, I wish I could read Japanese for more details.

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You can translate any webpage using Google Chrome, just right click and hit "Translate to English".

I saw a FBN who's pattern was upside down, which was very beautiful. This however is even stranger. Never knew about the colour morphs in Japan. Though they're sometimes very beautiful, I do prefer the normal colours most of the time.

Jort said:

I saw a FBN who's pattern was upside down, which was very beautiful. This however is even stranger. Never knew about the colour morphs in Japan. Though they're sometimes very beautiful, I do prefer the normal colours most of the time.

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Here's a pic of some of them from a Japanese seller, there are more out there, but the sites are Japanese and hard for me to find.

They look absolutely stunning. I also wasn't aware these color-morphs existed among FBN like they do in certain reptiles like Bearded Dragons and Leopard Geckos.

Is it the rarity of the color morphs that they don't seem to enter the international pet trade or something else?

They are very rare, so there's never a shortage of well off buyers in Japan I suppose. Breeding and raising Cynops species is rather long winded compared to Triturus and raising large quantitys of terrestrial juveniles up to a saleable size can take years.
Personally I agree with Jort, they are beautiful and should be admired for what they are, but not line bred or inbred to produce more and more.

The newt that started this thread looks like a Cynops Wolterstorfii (Yunnan Lake Newt), which is supposedly extinct.

I always think of those when I see a strange colour variants, but the original description of Cynops/Hypselotriton wolterstorfii mentions all specimens have red vertebral stripe and red spot behind the eye, this one has neither so i'm not convinced.

I think I can barely make out the red under the eyes and stripe in at least one individual, but that very well could simply be just a 1 in a 1,000,000 animal that has the coloration. The paratoid glands are the main reason why I would even for a second consider it as C.wolterstorffi, as the type specimens and photos I can find online have large ones like these animals have as well.

Something worth noting, species that have been believed to go extinct have been rediscovered in odder ways, and it could be that it was either a smaller population of the species to die off, or it had a larger and/or undiscovered range, or it could end up being mistaken for another species, as was the case for the Vegas Valley leopard frog (Lithobates fisheri) that was recently found to be the same species (Just an isolated, extirpated population) as the Chiricahua leopard frog (Lithobates chiricahuensis). Although believed to die off in the 1970's, there was the one isolated observation in 1984, according to this source:

EDGE :: Amphibian Species Information

I believe some genetic testing may be in order for some of these animals, but I'd imagine that would be difficult.

Lithobates fisheri and L.chiricahuensis are not the same species. What was thought to be L.chiricahuensis was actually at least two species (a fact already known beforehand), with L.fisheri along the western Mogollon Rim of Arizona, and L.chiricahuensis in the eastern Mogollon Rim and in the Madrean Sky Islands of southern Arizona into Mexico. L.subaquavocalis may yet be validated as a further species in this complex.

While I would acknowledge that a color aberration might well lack certain species-specific traits, I doubt very much that this is H.wolterstorffi. The missing traits are particular ones for ALL western Chinese members of this species group, but not for the eastern species. At a glance, I can't confirm which of the eastern species this is, but it's not a western one. I would also say that color aberrations of salamanders aren't all that rare, as their nocturnal and often fossorial tendencies along with frequent skin toxins [at least in salamandrids] make bright colors, including abnormal ones, either insignificant or even advantageous for survival. An albino frog is more apt to be lunch than a red newt [that said, I have found albino tadpoles of Pseudacris maculata and an albino Ambystoma krausei, as well as a melanistic Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis].

On the other hand, I am also not prepared to write off the survival of H.wolterstorffi. I've seen mention of an additional locality of this species; many 'missing' amphibians have been rediscovered recently at or near their type localities [including the Atsumi firebellied newt at a new locality]; and Yunnan in the vicinity of Kunming is topographically complex and includes at least three described species of newt in fairly close proximity, one of those being part of a more widespread complex of multiple species. I find it likely that there are both more species with small isolated ranges in the area, as well as more localities for some of those.

Maybe it's not Chinese at all? There's someone that posts on instagram under the name siriken_ya that breeds aberrant C. ensicauda ensicauda that look very much like the newt in my op,

FrogEyes said:

Lithobates fisheri and L.chiricahuensis are not the same species. What was thought to be L.chiricahuensis was actually at least two species (a fact already known beforehand), with L.fisheri along the western Mogollon Rim of Arizona, and L.chiricahuensis in the eastern Mogollon Rim and in the Madrean Sky Islands of southern Arizona into Mexico. L.subaquavocalis may yet be validated as a further species in this complex.

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Hmm, very interesting, this was my first time hearing this. Do you know anywhere to find the paper/study that was conducted on this? I would love to read it, it sounds interesting

Chinadog said:

Maybe it's not Chinese at all? There's someone that posts on instagram under the name siriken_ya that breeds aberrant C. ensicauda ensicauda that look very much like the newt in my op,

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It's Chinese. Japanese newts differ in several ways, most obviously the large parotid glands which are lacking in the first image [but clearly visible in the Japanese picture which follows].

For more on L.fisheri:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,24&q=lithobates+fisheri&btnG=
https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.e...=Resurrecting_an_extinct_species_archival.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...quavocalis/links/0a85e5320bd8dba7fe000000.pdf