okay so here we are on April 18th and I was out looking at the pond what was he
in here but if you can look at the center of the screen you'll see a little
newt flailing its tail in there among the substrate this is a freshwater pond
in the state of Pennsylvania northeastern United States
these newts are everywhere this one's swimming along you can tell by his thick
hind legs there that this is a male and they're kind of interesting I thought I
would just share with you since I happened upon them anyway we've had a
lot of rain recently snow recently and the weather is finally breaking but
these are pretty durable amphibians in FIB Ian's as you may already know have
to go to water in order to reproduce and that's what this guy's here for he's
looking for a female and lots of grassy bottom here the water is nice and clear
this is spring fed this pond is 14 feet deep and they're just scrounging around
along the water's edge here and all you have to do is sit really still and
they'll start moving around and to notice them if you move they'll dart
down into the grass and disappear but you might think these things aren't very
old and this one looks like he's about three and a half four inches long maybe
but here we go here's a female nice big fat one she's
got two males already clasping on to her she's one with the pale yellow she's
nice and thick this male has kind of passed this room he decides he doesn't
want to get involved here of course they reproduce externally there and she will
lay her eggs and then they'll be fertilized by these males and that's
what they're doing they're just flailing their tails around and hoping to be
there when she produces those eggs in fact they're not gonna let her go until
she does it so I thought I would share that with you
they are kind of interesting and how do you think they are these things actually
go through several phases when she produces her eggs they're gonna look
like little tadpoles but when you look at them up close you're gonna see that
they're nice and long and pretty dark in color and they'll have little
Gill's so they're gonna start their life off in the water but then they're gonna
leave the water when they grow their hind legs they start out with just four
lengths and then they can leave the water and you may have seen orange
versions little red colored ones that we call those EPS EFT and that's when they
spend their time on land and they can do that for many years up to seven years
they may be roaming around in the woods and the wetlands and after we get down
looking at this group here and I'm gonna take you up into the woods and we're
gonna look around to see if we can't find one of their land phase nudes here
which would be red or orange in color this tail flailing is characteristic of
the mating usually the males are doing it this case the female looks like she
might be trying to break free there and when they do produce eggs if I can come
back and find those I'll try to share that with you I'd like to show you what
the developing tadpole phase looks like she's rolling around she'd like to get
out of there you can tell these guys are not liking it look how thick she is
she's obviously got lots of eggs to produce there and she's good-sized she
may actually be anywhere from 12 to 15 years in age they only get up to about 5
inches in length so they're really not big but that underbelly really makes
them conspicuous why do you think the fish don't eat them or the birds for
that matter or crawdads they have something called tetrodotoxin and that
means that they're gonna be unpalatable nothing wants to eat them they taste
terrible and that's why such a fragile little
amphibian can be so conspicuous often they even leave the water especially
during rain and nothing eats them but still only about two percent of the
fertilized eggs are going to reach adulthood so they are they're plentiful
though they're not at risk or in danger and this shows the adjacent habitat we
have some wetlands here this is all on my property little spring
water running through here I thought it would try to find the red phase but all
I found was this slug here turned over some logs you can't find them in houmous
usually after a rain on a warm night although they're cold arty here's a
millipede scooting along here not at all what I'm looking for
there was a beetle underneath that is rotted logs are great places to find
newts because they're in there I'm looking for the buds of a they eat worms
they eat crustaceans they have a pretty good appetite and they're good at
hunting things down so they're on the go and that they survive cold winters and
here's a little lion covered this spider I'm sure she's very happy there you can
see part of her web there she's flipped over not as happy as I thought she was
in just a second she scooted right up around the log there now we're back to
the water I did not find what I was looking for and of course here we are
here's another male cruising around looking for a mate and all you have to
do is get near water and they can be found in rivers lakes in this case it's
a pond they like the slower moving water especially where there's undergrowth
like this sit still for a while see if you can't spot something
thank you for watching this today I think it's neat to see amphibians and I
hope you have something interesting near where you live this is an overview of
the pond I'll be sure to update you if I can find those eggs but for today sorry
to let you down thanks for watching subscribe for more have a great day