Tehachapi Slender Salamander

Batrachoseps stebbinsi

Reptiles & AmphibiansIn the app

The Tehachapi slender salamander or Batrachoseps stebbinsi is dark brown in color and has light speckles that are red and silver covering its body. The speckles are glitt…

Tehachapi Slender Salamander illustration

How to identify

The Tehachapi slender salamander or Batrachoseps stebbinsi is dark brown in color and has light speckles that are red and silver covering its body. The speckles are glittery-looking. It is 3 inches long in total length and has a long slender body that is snake-like with small limbs that appear vestigial. The members of this species lack lungs and therefore breathe through its skin, which must be moist at all times. It is known to possess frog-like projectile tongues which it uses for grabbing its prey in a flash. This salamander also has four toes on each foot.

Range

This species of salamander is endemic to the western United States. It is found in California, in Kern County.

Habitat

The Tehachapi slender salamander is nocturnal in nature and lives in damp leaf litter. It emerges during high humidity or rain. Like all other salamander belonging to the same genus, it feeds on crickets, beetles, mites, young snails and spiders. Breeding is terrestrial and occurs during rainy period. The juvenile salamanders are hardly found, thus they are thought to hatch underground and stay underground during the beginning of their lives.

Similar species

The California slender salamander or Batrachoseps attenuates possesses a moist skin that is characterized by its notable thinness. Its dorsum is black in color with reddish or brown stripes. The Gabilan Mountains slender salamander or Batrachoseps gavilanensis has a long tail and it possesses brown and black washes on its gray colored skin. There are also white speckling along the sides and black dots bordering its brown-striped dorsum The Gregarious slender salamander or Batrachoseps gregarious has small hands and feet, short limbs, narrow head and long tail. The sides of this species are dotted with white speck that ranges to a pale grey ventral region. The color of its skin ranges from light brown with darker specks to a much darker color.