

A hiker trekked to an alpine lake in Utah hoping to spot some rare salamanders, and she was not disappointed. Bree, who goes by breetraveling on Instagram, was in search of the state’s only salamander, the tiger salamander, in its “neotenic” form.
Videos by Outdoors
According to the National Park Service (NPS), “some populations of tiger salamanders, especially those in the western United States at higher altitudes [. . . ] are ‘neotenic.’ This means that even though the salamanders become sexually mature and can reproduce, they otherwise remain in their larval form and retain their gills (they don’t go through a metamorphosis and develop lungs). This generally happens when they find permanent water sources without predatory fish. Neotenic tiger salamanders are usually larger that normal terrestrial adults and can reach 15 inches in length.”
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NPS’s description helps explain the salamanders’ odd appearance in Bree’s video. They look like axolotls—a type of salamander that matures without undergoing metamorphosis. Like axolotls, Bree’s neotenic tiger salamanders in the alpine lake have obvious external gills (those branch-like appendages by their heads).
“Tiger Salamanders spend most of their year underground, in moist burrows beneath logs and among tree roots,” Bree wrote in her Instagram caption sharing the video. “They come to the surface just once a year, emerging at night in the early spring to trek across the snow to newly-thawed wetlands. [. . .] This was such a special sight to see!”
See the rare-to-spot neotenic salamanders here:
Header stock image by Elizabeth Moira Curland/Getty Images