I Found The World's Largest Salamander

I'm here in the beautiful mountainous region of Japan looking for Japan's largest amphibian, the giant salamander. That's the largest purebred Japanese giant salamander in the whole world. Yeah. In the whole world. In order to find them, we have to identify perfect habitat, viable prey options, and eventually find these big beautiful salamanders. When we do, we're going to see if they are genetically pure Japanese giant salamander, and if they are, we're going to contribute to an AI program that helps identify and save this incredible species. Let's go. Oh my goodness, it's a big beautiful one. So you see, we're just surveying from up above here down into the creek. We've got waders on, so we're walking in the creek. But just look at how thick some of these patches are, and how easy it is for these animals to hide. I think the most interesting thing, at least for me, is I expected a five foot long salamander to be in a deep river and have a lot of space, but no, they like just very shallow water because they're these suction feeders where they just open their mouth and slurp fish in. So if it's nice and shallow, the fish have nowhere to go, and if it's deep, the fish can be way above them. So yeah, they just like these tiny little pockets of water in these unbelievable perennial streams. But yeah, it's pretty hard to find them, believe it or not. So just keep going. So a very good sign here of what we're looking for, which is the prey. So look here. See these all sopraniformes? These are all minnows. Oh, and I see something else really cool. Look right here. This is awesome. Never seen one of these in the wild before. Always wanted to. Look at this. This is a firebelly newt. So this is so cool. When I was a kid, I actually kept these guys as pets, and even all the way in Zimbabwe, they used to sell firebelly newts in the aquarium stores. And you can see this is a male for a couple of reasons. One is the big old gonads there. But two is this purple hue that you can see in the tail. So very, very cool to see these guys in the wild. Highly, highly toxic. So I definitely don't want to eat him or lick my fingers after this. So I'll be setting him on his way. Right over here by all these minnows. We'll keep looking very closely and see if we can find his big, giant cousin that we've come all the way to Japan for. So off you go, little buddy. Send you on your way. Look at this bit of giant salamander food here. This is a native freshwater goby. And he was sitting on the sand. I scooped him up there. Wasn't really expecting it at night. But look at how big and meaty he is. If you think of a salamander that's capable of eating a fish that's nearly the size of my hand, that is a big, big salamander. Beautiful little fish, really. Very grumpy face, like old gobies. They have huge mouths the size of the animal. See that? The size of that mouth. Isn't that neat? Oh, the Japanese brown frog. There you go. Very excitingly named Japanese brown frog. But another great bit of salamander food there. Huh, buddy? Where are you going? There he goes. All right, so now we found a couple different prey species and some excellent habitat. So this is it. We really have to find our salamander before the end of the night. Oh, there's one. Look here. Look at this. Oh my goodness. It's a big, beautiful one. How cool is that? Look at the size of the salamander. Wow, that is amazing. Oh my goodness. Pop in here. Try not to startle him. Look at that. Oh my goodness. How unbelievably cool is this? It's literally a salamander the size of a small dog. What an amazing animal. Liam, let's use this opportunity to get some shots of his head for the AI program. Do you want to hand me the dive light and the GoPro? Just try not to stir up the water too much. Our footage will help researchers create a record of this individual animal, furthering our understanding of the population. All right, Richard, I think I've got everything we need for the AI identification program here. Good shots of his head. What's that? Oh, no way. There's another one. Goodbye, beautiful. Look, Liam, right here. There's another one. Oh my goodness. And he's just as big, if not bigger. Oh, look at this with his nose sticking out. Liam, look at this. How cool is that? Oh my goodness. This one's definitely bigger. Holy cow. That's a big one. System, really? I think he's over a meter. He's huge. I wonder if him and that other one down there, because they both look like males, are having a little territory dispute coming up. That's a big salamander. This is a purebred Japanese giant salamander, but a lot of these guys are under a tremendous amount of problems from hybridization with the Chinese giant salamander that were brought in here around 40 years ago. Tomorrow, I'm going to get hands-on with one of those hybrids and show you a comparison between the two and point out some of the problems. We'll be doing that first thing tomorrow, but for now, we'll just keep enjoying this beautiful salamander. Yuki-san. Hi. Hi, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for connecting with me. Welcome to our facility. I've heard that here at your facility, you have a pure, really large, one of the largest in the world, Japanese giant salamander, as well as a big hybrid. Is that correct? Uh-huh, yeah. I'd love to see them. We went out last night and we found what I thought was a huge, wild one. It was probably about this big, but I think what you have in the tanks here might be even bigger. Yeah. So tell me what we have here in these tanks. This is two tanks. Here is a Japanese giant salamander, purebred. Yeah, and here is a hybrid animal. Gotcha. From Kyoto. This individual is actually the biggest type of present alive animal. That's the largest purebred Japanese giant salamander in the whole world. Yeah. In the whole world. That's so exciting. Can we take a look? Okay. This is a hybrid one. That's okay, we'll open both if that's okay. So this is the hybrid. Yes. Oh my goodness, he is pretty huge though. Holy crap. And do the hybrids get bigger than the purebreds? No, this is a little shorter. Yeah. So this animal is even bigger. Yes. This animal is even bigger. All right, Liam, come over here. We got to get a shot of this. This is big, big stuff going on here. The world's largest Japanese giant salamander is right in this tank. Okay, let's go. Oh my god. My dog is about this big. Yeah. That's crazy. What an animal. I was in utter shock with just how big the salamander is. And I couldn't wait to take it out of the tank and get a close look at it. Wow. So you can really see the difference here between the purebred and the hybrid. There's texture difference in the skin bumps. There's coloration differences. Is there anything else that is not visible? Yeah. Japanese giant salamander is basically a light base with black spots. Lighter base with dark spots, okay. Chinese giant salamander is a dark base and light spot. Lighter spot, okay. This is a hybrid. Hybrid ones have both characters. Yeah. Black spots are like a Japanese one. Sort of less patterning. Just more bland. Interesting. Wow. So when you think of these salamanders, you don't think they're dangerous. But you said this hybrid is very aggressive. Yes, yes. Like will bite you badly aggressive. Sometimes. Really? Oh, exciting. Oh, man. This is wild. Yuki, when we spoke, you said you were going to show me that this is the largest one in the world. So where are we going to measure it? Yes. I'd love to do that. That's really exciting. Let's do it. This is very gentle. Very gentle. Look at that. Oh, my God. Okay. Oh, my goodness. He doesn't even fit in the bucket. Oh, and he's trying to bite. It's actually scary. This is a scary animal. Like I wasn't expecting to be intimidated by a big slime log like this. He's actually a scary creature. What's really cool is these guys are protected, right? Because this is a genetically pure animal like the ones we saw last night. These individuals are protected. I can't be hands-on. I can't do anything with them. Almost got you there. These guys, however, are mongrels, right? They're not genetically pure. And you might be asking yourself, why is that a problem? Well, simply put, these guys can be more hardy like a mongrel dog. By mixing their genes, they can be more hardy and they can out-compete these beautiful, magnificent purebred animals for habitat, for resources in the ecosystem. And if they do that, these guys will all but go extinct. So it's incredibly important to try and preserve the genetics of these purebred giants like this magnificent animal. So that these guys don't take over. Because as crazy as it sounds, these animals are the apex predators of the ecosystem. There is nothing above them in these stream habitats, which is crazy. This is the top dog. He's so heavy. Okay, watch your hand there. So 23.1 kilos right now. That's 50 pounds. That is a big salamander. Literally the biggest in the world. That is crazy. Watch his head there. Hello, buddy. Wow. Oh, he's so... Look at that mouth. Oh my god. He's longer than the tube. Yeah, so this is... Watch your fingers. Yeah, one meter, 39 centimeters. Yeah, is that about right? Oh, now he's longer. Now he's at seven. Okay, 7.5. So that's 141 and a half centimeters. 141 and a half centimeters. Yeah, holy crap. One meter and 41 centimeters. Look at the size. I mean, look at the white. Here's the white sticky secretion coming out. It's a defensive secretion, right? Yes. Yeah, that is crazy. Hey, you guys, if you're enjoying this video and enjoying these adventures, we're picking somebody to come with on an all expenses paid adventure with me this summer wildlife trip. You're not going to want to miss it. All you have to do is like, comment, and subscribe. Do it now. Come on a rat adventure. So 141 and a half centimeters. This is the largest Japanese salamander in the entire world. This individual. Yes, yes, yes. That's amazing. And you get to look after it. That's incredible. What an unbelievable animal. Shall we put him back in his tank? That was an insane experience. But next we're going to be handling the much more aggressive hybrid. And I was actually feeling a bit nervous. But first, let's put this big guy back. So big. So, so big. So big, yes. And just, I mean. Yeah, it's just unbelievable. Like it's, I'm literally at a loss for words seeing such a magnificent ancient creature. Okay. Slide him in. Yep. Easy peasy. Wow. Bye bye. That was amazing. That was amazing, you guys. Amazing. I can't believe that. Such a different experience. I got to see them in the wild last night. Not as big as this, but still really impressive. Yeah, yeah. And then to see one, this is how many years old? 60, 70 years old? We don't know exactly. But maybe, probably I guess over 60, 70, maybe 100. Maybe 100 years old. We don't know exactly. This is such a precious animal. The whole world needs to care about protecting this. I mean, I literally get goosebumps thinking about the idea that these creatures could be lost from this planet. This is a treasure that these animals still exist in our world today. Japan, American, I don't care who you are, everyone should be doing everything in their power to protect these creatures and keep their habitat pure so that they can look like this. I mean, wow. It's an amazing animal. It really is. This is, for me, as a little kid when I read about these, I don't want to sound ridiculous or racist, but to me, this is the real Godzilla. You know what I mean? This is the real Godzilla. I'm serious. These creatures from the rivers of Japan are like mythical, but they're real. It's unbelievable. Okay, so trying to not get too emotional here. We've just gone over the world's largest Japanese giant salamander. We've got to weigh it. We've confirmed at 50 pounds and 141.5 centimeters that that is literally the world's largest giant Japanese salamander. Now, the bigger, well, not bigger, sorry. Now, the smaller, uglier, more aggressive hybrid. And these are the problem animals, right? Yeah. So these are the creatures that are taking over in the ecosystem and out-competing the native ones because they have this mongrel genetics, right? Yeah. All right, let's weigh and measure this ugly. Oh, he is cheeky. Oh my goodness. He's a beast. Come on, big guy. In you go. Salamander rodeo. Come on. In you go. Okay. There we go. The Chinese ones were brought over here in the 1970s for food, right? And there was one group of them, like 40 individuals or something brought over. How many? 800. 800 individuals. So yeah, so one Okiyama businessman imported 800 to start a, for food, but to start a kind of breeding program. Yeah. To constantly supply. Like they do in China now. Exactly like they do in China. But then the Japanese government declared that, and correctly, that average people wouldn't be able to tell what's a Chinese one and what's a... And they'd go harvest the native. Yeah. So they said that, but they didn't make a plan of what to do with them. So basically these 800 got released into the wild and even one famously ended up in the moat of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. And it was a hybrid? A Chinese. One of those 800 originally. Wow. Isn't it interesting to see firsthand the difference in temperament between a hybrid and a native one? I mean, this animal is, look at it. It's fired up. It's trying to kill anything in its path. Ready? It's crazy that it's so different from the native one. 19.5. So still over 40 pounds. That's still a really, really big salamander. Wow. There he goes. So you want to get him in here? Come on, buddy. Climb yourself. He is a dangerous. That's a rodeo. Oh my god. He's so aggressive. Wow. It's a scary animal. I had no idea, to be honest. Oh my god. This is nuts. Look at him go. All right, buddy. You need to chill now. Chill, chill, chill. Look at the sticky level of that. Look at that. That white stuff that you're seeing come out here, that's a defensive secretion that they put out when they're under stress. But look at that. It's just so sticky and it stinks like really crazy BO. It's horrible, huh? Yeah. Okay, so let's get a length on him here. Okay, so about 126 centimeters. Let's see there, around 126 centimeters. Yeah. Okay, big guy. It's crazy because they are such an ancient animal. They really are survivors. Like this is a tough, regenerative, crazy animal. And strangely, by hybridizing, it makes them even tougher. Makes them stronger, which is the problem, really. It's the problem. Look at the goop. I mean, it's crazy how sticky that is, that substance. I'm gonna need a shower immediately after this. Okay. Okay, buddy. Back home you go. Crazy, bitey, mean machine. Wow, what an experience. That was really, really, absolutely incredible. I'm blown away, you guys. Thank you. Thank you so much. I am honored that you let me come, really. Thank you for spreading the word about their situation and asking for global help. Yes, this is so important. It's such an incredible creature. It's a dream come true for me. Blown away. Thank you, guys. Thank you.