California salamanders are jumping in the trees.
In the old one the sketch on television had a pelican in a turbine, and earlier in this column we have told of a ferret that ended up in a particle accelerator. Now science has advanced again. There has been a salamander in the wind tunnel in America.
Our story the main character is a salamander called Aneides vagrans, also called hiking salamander in English. There is no common name in Finnish.
In any case, the creature thrives in the trees. It lives high in the canopies of California’s famous, giant red trees.
So the salamander living in the trees! Salamanders belonging to amphibians usually spend their time in wetlands, but these rogues have adapted to seek protection from the upper air.
Up to dozens of salamanders can live in one tree. They eat a variety of insects and larvae.
Threatened salamanders may jump from tree to tree. But how in the world?
To find out, the researchers dropped salamanders into a wind tunnel, the same type where people try free fall in adventure parks. Of course smaller.
It turned out that the salamander doesn’t actually know how to fly, but does connect in a bit of the same way as a parachutist. It spreads its limbs and is thus able to control and slow down the fall. The salamander is about ten inches long, but does not weigh many grams.
Scientists dropped several different species of salamanders into the air stream, but only this particular lizard could connect.
In the wild, a salamander may want to escape, for example, by jumping from a tree, but it does not want to fall to the ground. There are other predators lurking there.
With its skill, it is able to connect from one tree to another or fall in a controlled manner lower down the same tree.
The study was published Current Biology newsletter.
In Finland inhabits two species of salamanders: the water lizard and the toad lizard. By now, they can be seen spawning in small ponds. However, Rupilisko is very endangered in our country and they only live in Åland and South-Eastern Finland.
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