Little Devil

Far from being an enthusiastic inhabitant of fire, as the ancients believed, the salamander must be moist, dies if it is even thoroughly dried out. Though no fire-eater, the lizard-like little creature is, however, something of a devil. He secretes in his skin a milky poison which causes most of his potential enemies to leave him severely alone. This skin poison is thought to be harmless to man.

Last week a group of Stanford University scientists announced that they had found a far more virulent poison in a species of salamander, Triturus torosus, which is abundant in California. The venom occurs in the egg yolk, in embryos which have not finished eating the yolk, and in egg-carrying adult females. When some of this poison was injected into a cat, the cat lost muscular coordination, collapsed, went into convulsions, suffered respiratory paralysis, died in 20 minutes. Quantitative tests showed that one gram (1/28 oz.) of Triturus poison is enough to kill 75,000 mice or 600 monkeys or (presumably) 21 grown men.

Last year, at the height of the craze which led college students to swallow goldfish, mice, worms and other spectacular inedibles, a Stanford student swallowed a specimen Triturus. Until last week the young man did not realize how lucky he had been. Since he did not even get sick after his feat, the downed Triturus must have been a male or an eggless female.

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