Dollfish: the protection of the past few decades may have done bad things with good intentions.

Today's protagonist, the Chinese giant salamander, has a common name we are familiar with-the baby fish.

andrias davidianus. Picture: Daniel Heuclin / photoshot.com

Hide the gills.

Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus) belongs to the suborder Coleoptera, Cryptobranchia, Cryptobranchidae and Genus. It is a relatively primitive species in the existing order. The fossil record of Cryptobranchidae can be traced back to the late Jurassic 160 million years ago. There are only 2 genera and 3 species of Cryptobranchidae. Besides Chinese giant salamander, there are Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus) and cryptobranchial salamander (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis).

The word Cryptobranchidae of the family Cryptobranchidae comes from two ancient Greek words, "krypto" means "hidden", and "branch" is literally translated as a branch, which refers to the feathered outer gills used to breathe in water at the stage of caudate larvae.

Cute giant salamander larvae, you can see their pink feathered outer gills. Picture: zslsites.org

The name of the Chinese giant salamander, é mile Blanchard, dedicated his original name "davidianus" to the French priest Armand David. He collected a large number of animal and plant specimens during his missionary work in China and shipped them to Europe for scholars to study. In addition to the Chinese giant salamander, there are also familiar giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), Milu deer (Elaphurus davidianus) and Davidia involucrata (Davidia involucrata) exported to the west through the hands of Tan Wei Dao.

A giant of amphibians

The Chinese big beetle has a flat body, small eyes without eyelids, short and stout limbs, short and flat tail; smooth skin on the body surface, with pairs of verrucous grains, and longitudinal skin folds on the side of the body; the body color is more changeable, mostly dark brown, yellowish brown, etc., often accompanied by black or reddish brown spots, which is quite similar to the texture and color of pebbles in the environment, which is an excellent hidden color.

Picture: Wernher Krutein / photovalet.com

The Chinese giant salamander is the largest existing amphibian, which can reach sexual maturity when it grows to 40 centimeters, but like other lower vertebrates, the size of the giant salamander increases with age, usually more than 1 meter. The largest individual ever recorded is 1.8 meters long and weighs more than 50 kilograms.

The children face the wall with a Chinese giant salamander. Picture: Cyril Ruoso / mindenpictures

The breeding period of Chinese giant salamander is from May to August every year, the female salamander can lay more than 300 eggs at a time, the outer layer of the egg is wrapped in a transparent glial layer, and the egg is like a rosary, with a length of several meters.

The female salamander leaves after laying eggs, and then the male salamander not only has to complete the most critical fertilization work, but also plays the important role of guarding the egg belt, and some conscientious male salamander will wrap the egg belt around the body to prevent predators from eating. The fertilized eggs can hatch into young salamanders after 52 to 68 days, and the newly hatched giant salamander babies have group behavior, and the male salamander will not leave until they can live independently.

Chinese rosary eggs connected into beads. Picture: ivanli / caudata.org

There are tail animals with well-developed surface glands, and many species secrete venom that turns the stomach of predators, and a few types of toxicity can be fatal. Although giant salamanders do not secrete venom, their skin glands secrete a lot of mucus when they encounter enemies, so predators usually give up catching.

The doll bites even if it is in a hurry.

The reason why the Chinese giant salamander has the common name of "baby fish" is not only because it looks like a black and fat doll, but also because its cry is very much like the cry of a baby.

Our ancient ancestors discovered this feature a long time ago, and the earliest written record of the giant salamander can be found in a paragraph in the Beishan Classic of Shan Hai Jing: "two hundred miles in the northeast, called Dragon Hou Mountain, there is no grass, wood, much gold and jade. The water of the decision flows out of the water, and flows into the river to the east. Among them, many mermaids look like? Fish, four feet, its sound like a baby, eating without dementia. " The words "mermaid" and "[t í] fish" in this paragraph all refer to giant salamander. In the following two thousand years, the giant salamander appeared in classics such as Shuijing Notes, Ji Jie and Compendium of Materia Medica with the names of "fish", "pike", "foot fish" and so on.

A reddish Chinese giant salamander between the pebbles. Picture: Michael Wai Neng Lau / Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden

So many common names also show that the number of giant salamander is large in the past, and the distribution range is more extensive. According to the records, the distribution of wild giant salamander is from Taihang in the north to Nanling in the south, from the eastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the west and through the Yangtze River Delta in the east. They live in water all their lives, live in shallow streams or underground caves, like shade and fear of heat, usually go out at night and rarely go ashore.

Chinese giant salamander in the water. Picture: Daniel Heuclin / photoshot.com

Although the giant salamander looks cute and cute, don't be fooled by its appearance of "acting like a pig and eating a tiger". The giant salamander has fine teeth in its mouth and swallows it when it feels its prey passing by. Their main prey are molluscs, crustaceans, fish and frogs, but they will not let go if they encounter overboard birds and small mammals.

It is said that a woman in Xiangxi once put her baby by the pool to wash clothes, and in a twinkling of an eye, the child was dragged into the water and eaten by the giant salamander. After all, legends are legends, and the authenticity can not be tested for a long time, but now many cases of giant salamander farmers being bitten can be found everywhere.

In addition to the dense teeth, the giant salamander also has a big mouth. Picture: chimelong.com

The wrong way of protection

Since ancient times, giant salamander has often been caught as food or medicine, but the biggest threat to its survival is the destruction of habitat. It is estimated that the population of wild Chinese giant salamander has fallen by more than 80% since the 1950s. The Red list of the World Union for Conservation of Nature rated it as extremely endangered (CR), and China also listed it as a national second-class protected animal in 1988.

With the bottleneck of artificial breeding technology of Chinese giant salamander broken through, this former rare animal gradually escaped from the brink of extinction and even began to enter the dining table of ordinary people's homes. Many protected areas have also purchased young salamanders from giant salamander farms for proliferation and release, the number of which has exceeded 100000. The protection situation of giant salamander seems to be very good.

Breeding farms need to regularly release a certain proportion of giant salamander from the wild as one of the means of protection to maintain the population of wild giant salamander. Picture: zslsites.org

A recent study on the population genetics of giant salamander shows that the genetic diversity of Chinese giant salamander is not single, and the current data support that the Chinese giant salamander population contains at least five independent evolutionary branches. In other words, there may be five different species of giant salamander in China.

This is supposed to be good news to greatly increase species diversity, but it makes people feel more worried after thinking about it. Once disorderly introduction, breeding and release have greatly destroyed the genetic diversity of giant salamander. Different species of giant salamander have become a "hodgepodge" under the "protection" of human beings. Now "purebred" giant salamander has been difficult to find in the wild, so the protection of giant salamander has fallen into an awkward position.

People cannot help asking whether the protection work of the past few decades has done bad things with good intentions.

Just last month, scholars from China, Britain and Japan published a study. They surveyed 97 counties in China from 2013 to 2016 and found only 24 wild Chinese giant salamanders. Picture: Ken Lucas / ardea.com

The situation of the Chinese giant salamander reminds me of an extinct bird. Giant (Podilymbus gigas), also known as Attilan, this flightless waterbird is found only in Lake Attilan in Guatemala. The population declined in the 1960s when big-mouthed sea bass (Micropterus salmoides) were introduced into the lake to compete for food. It never rains but it pours. Over the next few years, environmental upheavals such as shrinking lakes and destruction of breeding grounds have rapidly pushed this endemic species to the brink of extinction.

In 1975, a study aimed at the giant. The conservation project has been launched, and the relevant protection work has been carried out vigorously. A few years later, it was observed that the giant. There has been a significant increase in the number. Just when people were filled with joy that the species was about to break away from the brink of extinction, an embarrassing scene appeared. One day, the researcher approached a small group of giant turtles in a boat. After being frightened, they quickly stepped on the water and flew away. It was only then that people realized that they had been protecting a group of invading giant beaks (Podilymbus podiceps), and that the giant birds they really wanted to protect were quietly extinct under the "protection" of people.

The now extinct giant. Picture: David G. Allen / wikimedia

Although the circumstances of Chinese giant salamander and giant salamander are different, they reflect the same problem-if the most basic systematic status of a species is not understood, then all conservation work will become empty talk.

For the Chinese giant salamander, it is not too late to adjust the conservation plan; for other species, we hope not to repeat the same mistake.

This is the 177th article in the fourth year of the species calendar, from @ Qishuo, author of the species calendar.

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Cryptobranchidae Japanese giant salamander