A newt commonly found in BC’s watersheds might seem “cute,” from the viewpoint of a large human. Those goofy eyes with yellow irises and dark lids. That squishy nose. The smile that looks serene. The soft body. But take heed: “DON’T touch!" screams the yellow or orange underbelly on a rough-skinned newt. "Don’t even think about eating me–on pain of death!” They mean it.
Photo credit: Dave Huth, Flickr, Creative Commons
Many newts ooze toxins from their skin. BC’s Taricha granulosa, a species common to watersheds from California to Alaska, are among the most poisonous newts on the planet, and are the most poisonous amphibian in BC, according to the Canadian Herpetological Society. In case their colour is not a clear enough warning not to take a bite, one whiff of a newt should put a person off: their stink is often described as acrid.
The toxin kills any bird or mammal that tries to eat a newt, but is generally not dangerous to human skin, although it can cause irritation and, if in contact with an open wound, numbness. Eating a newt, however, can be lethal. In 1979, reported the journal of the American Medical Association, a very drunk 29-year-old man “swallowed a 20-cm newt on a dare,” quickly experienced tingling and numbness, and died hours later of cardiopulmonary arrest.
If the hapless drinker had paid attention to science he would have known the toxin has been recognized since the 1960’s, when a researcher in Oregon became intrigued by a folk legend. Matt Soniak reported in Atlas Obscura in 2016, “Three friends, the story goes, went hunting in the Oregon Coast Range one weekend and never came home. Police later found them dead at their campsite with no signs of violence or struggle. They also found a fourth body: a rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa) that had been accidentally boiled with the water used to make a pot of coffee.”
The toxin, once known as "tarichatoxin," is tetrodotoxin, a neurotoxin also found in pufferfish. It's about 1,000 times more toxic by weight than cyanide, and causes paralysis and death by asphyxiation.
Photo credit: Bob Swingle, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Public Domain via Flickr
Despite their toxicity, BC newts are very rarely in the news. They seem to live quiet lives hidden under logs in forests, or hunting in fresh water. One exception to this was In March 2024, when the City of Langford issued a warning to keep children and pets away from rough-skinned newts in area wetlands, noting that one newt “contains enough poison to kill 25,000 mice.”
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Five Facts About The Rough-Skinned Newt:
1. Newts, astonishingly, can regenerate tissue including limbs, heart muscle, parts of its nervous system and the lens of its eye. Researchers who study the animals, hoping to replicate this feat in people, have been blocked so far by the vast size of the newt’s genome–the blueprint for life, reported the science journal Nature, which is ten times larger than the human genome.
2. The toxic skin of newts deters all but one predator–garter snakes, who often make a meal of newts and have evolved tolerance for their toxin. Newts, on the other hand, are carnivores who eat insects, slugs, crustaceans and worms, and the eggs and larvae of other amphibians.
3. Rough-skinned newts, like all newts, are salamanders (But not all salamanders are newts.). They reach a maximum length of 22 cm from snout to tail, notes the Canadian Herpetological Society, and during their 12-year lifespan, they range from mature forest areas adjacent to water, to shallow aquatic areas including wetlands, ponds, pools and slow streams where they breed.
4. Dry skin is unusual among newts, and BC’s rough-skinned newts are distinguished by the granular bumps on their skin. During breeding season, however, males turn smooth-skinned, and exude a hormone that attracts females. Each female newt can lay hundreds of eggs each season, one at a time, which they attach to plants or plant material in the water.
5. A newt–or rather the eye of a newt–makes a spooky appearance in Song of the Witches in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog …. (read the poem at the Poetry Foundation)
Alas, the exact meaning of "Eye of newt" is muddled by the centuries since the play was written. Did Shakespeare know that newts are poisonous? Or was the ingredient simply a dark yellow seed of the mustard plant, named after the yellow eyes of newts?
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In terms of conservation, rough-skinned newts are not currently a species of concern–but “the destruction of forest and wetland habitats is the primary threat,” noted he herpetological society. “Pollution, such as herbicides, agricultural effluent and road salt can be detrimental to newts since toxins are easily absorbed through their skin. Climate change and introduced pathogens pose potentially serious future threats to Canadian salamanders.”
Photo credit: Don Loarie, Flickr, Creative Commons
