Barred Tiger Salamander

The barred tiger salamander is a mole salamander of lower western Canada, the western United States, and northern Mexico, ranging from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba south through the western United States to Texas. It is large, typically 7.6 to 16.5 centimeters long though neotenic individuals can reach 17.8 to 38.1 centimeters, with a broad head and sturdy body colored gray, dark brown, or black with muddy yellow bars and spots giving a tiger like pattern, and a lighter belly. It occupies lowland deciduous and coniferous forest, open fields, upland meadows, grassland, desert, semidesert, and streams. One of its subspecies, the Sonoran tiger salamander, was listed as endangered in 1997 because of habitat degradation and fragmentation from increased human activity.