7 September: Newts

Today is Newt Day. Although it’s actually a holiday celebrated by Maze Runner fans on the 250th day of the year, because a character called Newt died on page 250, I’ve decided to celebrate by presenting ten facts about the amphibians found in ponds.

1. There are over 100 species of newt found in North America, Europe, North Africa and Asia. Newts are members of the Salamandridae family. All newts are salamanders, but not all salamanders are newts. Generally, newts spend more of their adult lives in the water than salamanders.

2. Some newts are deadly. The rough skinned newt, native to the American west coast, produces a toxin on its skin which could kill 25,000 Mice. A man in Oregon once ate one as a dare after a drunken night out. Over the next two hours he began to feel numb and weak and then experienced cardiopulmonary arrest. He died in hospital. The Spanish ribbed newt produces the toxin on its ribs, which it can rotate so they puncture the skin and inject an attacker with the poison. Thanks to newts’ amazing regeneration abilities, one the danger has passed the newt’s ribs retract and the skin heals in no time.

3. Newts can regenerate several different parts of their bodies, including limbs, tails, jaws, spinal cords, heart ventricles, and Eyes. Scientists have studied this ability; a team at the University of Dayton found that newts could regenerate the lenses of their eyes at least 18 times and the replacements functioned as well as the originals.

4. Eft is an old English word for a newt. These days it usually refers to the land based juvenile stage of the animal’s life cycle, between the water based larval stage (equivalent to Frog tadpoles) and the adult stage when they return to the water.

5. Newts in space! Or astronewts: newts have travelled in space, because humans wanted to study how their regeneration abilities were affected by space travel. Being in space, the scientists found, would slow down regeneration of a limb, but once the newt returned to Earth the re-growth resumed at a much faster rate. Some newts even bred in space but newts born in orbit were usually deformed.

6. In 1985, New Hampshire became the first state to designate an official amphibian. And it was a newt. The spotted newt, to be exact.

7. While fellow amphibians like frogs and Toads are quite vocal, most people would be hard pushed to answer the question, what sound does a newt make? Most people would probably say they don’t make any sound at all. They do make sounds but you have to listen closely. Some species make a clicking noise or whistle to scare off a rival.

8. The largest newt found in Britain is the Great Crested Newt, which can grow to twice the size of other newts, around 18cm long. They can live for up to 15 years.

9. In the mating season, males secrete a pheromone to attract a female, and then it will dance for her, waving its tail. Once they’ve done the deed the female selects a suitable pond plant to lay her egg on. She folds the leaf over the egg to protect it. Once the female detects the pheromone, mating is pretty much a done deal. Scientists have found that if they expose female newts to the pheromone when there is no male present, it makes them so randy that they’ll try to mate with each other.

10. It’s said witches could summon demons using a type of brandy made from newt body parts. Hence at the start of Macbeth, the three witches include “eye of newt” in their brew.

Character birthday

September, a member of the group of villains known as the Calendar Mob. She is a probability alterer from another world, but has adopted this date as her Earth birthday. The origins of her power aren’t known but she claims it is because she is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter.