Giant Salamanders; Would You Believe They Common Imports into Britain before World War II?

Giant Salamanders have been in the news in the past week. Chinese Giant Salamanders were confiscated by customs and sent to London Zoo. I have not been able to find out whether the salamanders were brought into the country destined for the restaurant trade or to be kept in a public or private animal collection.

I have written about these salamanders before and their being so commonly available that in Hong Kong in the 1960s that they were used for class dissection. All the ones that arrived were about 35 cm long, like the one at London Zoo, and only a sixth of their maximum length. That seems to be about the size favoured by restaurants in China.

Chinese Giant Salamander. Hong Kong 1967
On the roof of the Northcote Science Building

Giant Salamanders are on the menu in China as ‘the fish that walks’. They are bred on a commercial scale but there seems no doubt that wild-caught, i.e. poached, individuals make up a large proportion of those sold. Numbers have fallen massively in the past decades—80% since the 1950s is the current estimate and the species is now classed as Critically Endangered because not only is it a food item worth real money at the luxury end of the market but habitats have been and are being wiped out or ravaged as human habitation expands.

What is not generally known is that giant salamanders were imported into Britain for the amateur herpetologist trade in the 1930s. I found this article in Water Life magazine of 27 September 1938:

September is a good time to review the happenings of the closing season, which has been interesting for several reasons, and to make one’s plans for the winter. First as regards supply. A wealth of species has been imported, among them…Megalobatrachus [the generic name for giant salamanders used for decades before it was decided Andrias had priority]… 

The demand for the Gigantic Salamander must surely now be filled. No less than three of our dealers have had these animals during the last year or two, and a fourth told me recently he is hoping to arrange a consignment at any time now. Considering how commonly these animals are met with in Japan and parts of China, their price remains disappointingly high over here. Since most of the continental zoos and aquaria number their specimens by the half-dozen or more, it is remarkable that the breeding of the species at Amsterdam seventy-odd years ago has never been emulated.

The author did not distinguish between Chinese (Andrias davidianus) and Japanese Giant Salamanders (A. japonicus). Given their once common occurrence in the live-food trade in China, including Hong Kong, my guess is that those imported in the 1930s were from China.

It is also known that giant salamanders (often called Gigantic Salamanders, as above) were imported by European dealers for zoos and for amateur herpetologists in the later decades of the 19th Century. Thus the Reverend Gregory Bateman in his famous book, The Vivarium, published 1897, not only wrote what was then known of these animals but this:

These huge Salamanders may, from time to time, be bought of the larger dealers in wild animals, at prices, according to size, which range from £10 downwards. 

£10 then would be £1000 now (calculated on increase in retail prices). There were some very wealthy amateur herpetologists around in the years before the First World War.

The giant salamanders imported into Europe must have been pretty tough, having survived a long sea voyage through the tropics. Indeed, what struck me about the ones we handled in Hong Kong was how unfazed they were by high temperatures; not at all what might be expected from inhabitants of rocky streams flowing from mountains. Equally, my wife, who did the wrangling (well, somebody had to carry the camera) was surprised by how willing they were to snap at a passing finger or hand.

Finally, I do not know the identity of the author—a prolific and knowledgeable writer on reptiles and amphibians in the 1930s—who wrote under the non-de-plume ‘Amphibius’. It is known that he died between 1939 and about 1950. I have written about him and my search here. I would be most grateful to hear from anybody with more information.