You’d think an amphibian exceeding eight inches in length, common enough to be found from California to Alaska, and hardy enough to live in elevations from sea level to eight or ten thousand feet would be a familiar sight. But this is definitely not the case with the Northwestern Brown Salamander. Not that salamanders are the easiest creatures in the world to find in the first place. Any animal that likes dark damp places is one that normally escapes notice until the intrepid collector goes deliberately looking. But the Northwestern Brown belongs to an especially secretive family of salamanders called the Ambystomatidae – the Mole Salamanders. As the name obviously implies they live like moles, spending the majority of their lives underground coming up into world of light only to breed and even then only during certain times of the year. Even that is not a reliable indicator since breeding behavior is dependent on weather conditions still not clearly understood.
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