T. cristatus feeds on dead fish in the wild

[froggy]

This article is in the latest edition of 'Salamandra', from the DGHT here: http://www.salamandra-journal.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=234&Itemid=72 (this should download directly, if it doesn't work, go to Downloads | Issues 2011 and find the paper.

The authors observed T. cristatus swarming round a dead fish in a pond where newts and fish manage to co-exist (lots of algal mats provide refuge), tearing chunks from it until the viscera were exposed, and then feeding preferentially on the intestines.

This might suggest that captive cresteds might benefit from the occasional meal of fish.

Quite interesting, anyway

C

 

[Molch]

this is fascinating. It reminds me of reports going around a few years ago of hippos seen eating carrion in Africa.

You can't blame them for not passing up a huge blob of protein lying around in the pond. I do wonder if this feeding behavior will be more likely if invertebrates are in short supply

 

[Mark]

I think scavenging is in their nature. A few years back one of my adult alpine newts died and before I realised what had happed the rest of the group had reduced it to a few fragments of floating skin. No bones, nothing. Nutrient recycling at it’s finest. I suspect the fish intestines were favoured simply because they were soft and easy to eat.

 

[froggy]

Yes, that's what the authors thought, too - once the intestines were exposed they were easier to tear apart. I think some newts scavenge more than other species...Cynops/Hypselotriton seem to just ignore dead tank mates, while others, like the alpines and cresteds and also some of the Lissotritons seem to scavenge more. I was at a vernal pond in the Ashdown forest in Kent a few years ago, which was teeming with smooths, palmates and a few cresteds. Some kids had thrown some bread in (anticipating ducks, I think) and it was surrounded by newts tearing pieces of bread off. It looked almost like a sea anemone with all the newts around it!

 

[Azhael]

Wow, scavenging from a dead fish seems about right, but the bread thing really surprises me. I wouldn´t have thought newts would be interested in bread at all. Were they really eating the bread? I´m sorry, i keep thinking maybe they were eating some invertebrates that gathered around the bread or something xD It just seems so weird.

 

[froggy]

They were definitely eating bread, and also puff pastry. The pond was so crowded that I suspect they were hungry enough to tackle anything. As Morg said in his Pseudotriton thread, captive sals do get more fussy - I think if a newt is hungry enough it will eat anything.

C

 

[Azhael]

Well i can understand them not being able to resist the puff pastry xDD
That´s a very interesting story, Chris, i really wouldn´t have thought it possible. It would be interesting to know if this kind of opportunism is common and all popualtions are susceptible of displaying such behaviours, or if it´s something that that particular population adapted to given the particular situation of their habitat. I´m thinking about something like what happens with pellets in captivity...they aren´t a natural food, but even wild newts figure out that they are edible once they have been exposed to them a number of times while being hungry. I mean, if you threw pellets in a pond where no one has ever thrown pellets, i imagine most newts would ignore them entirely, but if you persist they would probably end up accepting them..maybe that´s what happened with the bread...they eventually learned to recognize it as food, just as the ducks did xD

 

[fishkeeper]

Funny I haev found feeder fish and even roach entrails to be a nice substitute if small worms arent available for terrestrial juveniles. Tweezer fed however.

 

[grius]

Maybe a little of topic, but is there any report of newt/salamanders eating plants?

 

[froggy]

I'm not sure about plants (at least deliberately), but there is a frog that feeds on fruit as part of it's diet (Xenohyla truncata).

The authors of the paper I posted also cite an instance of T. cristatus feeding on live fish fry ("T. cristatus has been noted to prey upon the fry of the small fish, Leucaspius delineatus (Kinne 2004)."), which is in itself interesting.

C

 

[peter5930]

Maybe a little of topic, but is there any report of newt/salamanders eating plants?

I've found that my axolotls are quite partial to cooked vegetables, particularly broccoli, though their attraction to it might be influenced by the flavours it picks up from the chicken and oils that it's mixed with.

YouTube - axolotls eating broccoli

When I add cooked stuff to their tank, they use their sense of smell of find it, and then they press their noses against individual bits of food until they find something they like and snap it up. They didn't even need to be acclimatised to it; they swarmed all over the cooked vegetables and chicken and started eating it the first time I gave it to them. At first I worried that they'd be unable to digest it and would become impacted when I saw the size of some of the pieces they were swallowing, but they handle it just fine, even if it gives them strange bulges in their bellies for a while.

I've tried feeding the same cooked vegetable and chicken mixture to my alpine newts and I'm not sure if they eat it or just leave it for the snails, but they're far less enthusiastic about it than the axolotls at any rate.

 

[peter5930]

I found this reference to Pleurodeles waltl eating plants in the wild.

Eating any small moving prey, and even plants and young snakes, the newt can switch diets when the main food source is scarce, and it can also remain for a long time without food.

 

[Jennewt]

Maybe a little of topic, but is there any report of newt/salamanders eating plants?

The only documented case of a caudate eating plants in the wild, as far as I know, is the case of Sirens, which ingest floating plants occasionally as part of their diet.

I've found that my axolotls are quite partial to cooked vegetables, particularly broccoli, though their attraction to it might be influenced by the flavours it picks up from the chicken and oils that it's mixed with.

Feeding an axolotl with vegetables seems pointless to me. It messes up the tank without providing them with what they need to eat. I'd be really surprised if they went for broccoli that wasn't cooked with chicken and cod liver oil.

 

[grius]

The only documented case of a caudate eating plants in the wild, as far as I know, is the case of Sirens, which ingest floating plants occasionally as part of their diet.

That was a little unexpected. I thought of the few monitor species that have fruit in their diet and got currious if there was something similar among caudate.