Tips for Buying a Tiger Salamander

Video Transcript

"Now to purchase a salamander, they're pretty readily available on the market. Most pet stores will carry them, or some people breed them in captivity. Although they're not the easiest animal to breed in captivity, so most of the animals that are available for sale are actually wild caught individuals. Now, when you're looking at a tiger salamander, you want to make sure that you purchase a healthy individual. Look carefully on its skin. Make sure there are no blisters or discolorations. That could be the beginning of fungal disease or bacterial disease, which once the salamander gets, once this disease has set into it the salamander can look pretty healthy for a while, but then it will crash pretty hard and it's hard to cure them of those fungal diseases. This salamander doesn't have any wounds on it. Sometimes wild caught animals are crammed into buckets or containers where it's unhealthy for them to be for a long period of time. If they're in that situation for a long period time they can result in wounds or bite marks from other salamanders. Overall, you just want to take your salamander, pick it up, look over it, make sure it's all healthy, make sure its skin looks all good in choosing your salamander. Also you want to make sure that it's a pretty active salamander, it walks around. You just saw a feeding response from this guy because he's hungry, so you know that he's in good shape."