{"id":5680,"date":"2010-03-30T14:32:30","date_gmt":"2010-03-30T19:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=5680"},"modified":"2010-03-30T17:23:13","modified_gmt":"2010-03-30T22:23:13","slug":"slithering-salamanders-turtleman-why-did-the-spotted-salamander-cross-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=5680","title":{"rendered":"“Slithering Salamanders, Turtleman! Why Did the Spotted Salamander Cross the Road?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"yss<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s ten o’clock at night, pitch black, with torrential downpours from a persistent coastal storm that has flooded shorelines from New Jersey to Massachusetts.\u00c2\u00a0 Why would any sane person venture into the swampy wetlands of SouthCoast Massachusetts to investigate what happens in the dark shadows of a rainy spring night?\u00c2\u00a0 Luckily, Turtle Journal needs not concern itself with sanity.\u00c2\u00a0 So, we pulled on our boots, slipped into our slickers, clicked on\u00c2\u00a0our headlamps and sloshed through the flooded wetlands … in search of loved\u00c2\u00a0crazed amphibians.<\/p>\n

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Why Did the Spotted Salamander Cross the Road?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Slipping and sliding through swampy backroads and bouncing through bottomless puddles, we reached an abandoned cranberry bog in Marion on the SouthCoast of Massachusetts.\u00c2\u00a0 Approaching the bog,\u00c2\u00a0we\u00c2\u00a0spied a spotted salamander that had gone “tharn” (a coined word from Watership Down<\/em><\/strong> to describe a creature frozen in place) in the middle of the road from the blaze of our headlights.\u00c2\u00a0 Why do they cross the road on these dark, rainy spring nights?\u00c2\u00a0 The simple answer is that they are impelled by biology to journey from their over-wintering sites to mating aggregations, called congresses, when the warm spring downpours arrive in late March or early April.<\/p>\n

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Slithering Salamanders!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Spotted salamanders are delightful critters.\u00c2\u00a0 Females larger than males; males faster than females.\u00c2\u00a0 Bright yellow spots running down their bodies in two parallel lines.\u00c2\u00a0 In the water they swim with grace, while landward they slither and waddle.<\/p>\n

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Releasing Spotted Salamanders<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

We couldn’t forget to mention the outrageous and cacophonous chorus of critters that bellowed for attention\u00c2\u00a0while accompanied by the steady, staccato\u00c2\u00a0cadence of torrential downpours.\u00c2\u00a0 We estimated this musical rendition at about 120 dB (decibels) loudness; that is, 5 db above a sandblaster and 5 dB below a pneumatic riveter.\u00c2\u00a0 Watching our new friends disappear into their mating pond already adorned with large egg sacs from several days (and nights) of stormy\u00c2\u00a0love proved a beautiful sight as they gracefully swam in seeming choreographic synchrony with Nature’s version of a\u00c2\u00a0Little Amphibian Night Music<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) It’s ten o’clock at night, pitch black, with torrential downpours from a persistent coastal storm that has flooded shorelines from New Jersey to Massachusetts.\u00c2\u00a0 Why would any sane person venture into the swampy wetlands of SouthCoast Massachusetts to investigate what happens in the dark shadows of a rainy spring night?\u00c2\u00a0 Luckily, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[826],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5680"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5698,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5680\/revisions\/5698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}