Chinese Giant Salamander

The Chinese giant salamander is one of the largest amphibians in the world and one of the largest salamander species, a fully aquatic animal endemic to rocky mountain streams and lakes of the Yangtze river basin in central China, with introduced populations established in Japan's Kyoto Prefecture and possibly Taiwan. Regarded as a living fossil, it is critically endangered in the wild, its numbers having fallen by more than an estimated 80 percent since the 1950s due to habitat loss, pollution and overcollection for use as a delicacy and in traditional Chinese medicine, even as it is extensively farmed, and often bred, on facilities across central China that draw heavily on wild-caught stock. Although long treated as one of only two living Andrias salamander species in Asia alongside the Japanese giant salamander, genetic evidence indicates the Chinese giant salamander may actually comprise at least five distinct cryptic species, a finding that deepens concern for its conservation.