The smooth newt Surrey Wildlife Trust ranger Jamel Guenioui sheds light on a pond living creature with a flamboyant mating ritual.
TAKE a torch and creep down to your local pond on a March evening and you may be lucky enough to spot one of our most flamboyant animals coming up for air. Smooth newts (aka common newts) belong to a family of salamanders that spend time on land but return to the water to reproduce – and now is the season for their singular mating ritual.
Smooth newts are slender and usually grow to about 10cm, with the tail accounting for about half of this. As their name suggests, they have smooth, permeable skin, which makes them vulnerable to pollution and desiccation, but in fact it is no smoother than the similar palmate newt.
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