An astute reader might wonder why these Mediterranean amphibians are featured in this book. After all, members of the genus Icthyander have been known of for thousands of years. However, for much of this time, their lifestyle and behavior has been mysterious. Similarly, despite reports of specimens of aberrant size, I. masculum was not declared separate species from the similar but smaller I. oceanus until the mid-twentieth century. At the same time, cryptozoological reports of specimens of unusual size and locality even for masculum abound. Primarily, however, it is just my own personal interest. Of all non-invertebrates, the marine “salamanders” fascinate me the most.

Ichthyander is the only surviving genus of the family Piscanima, a sister group of the extinct Albanerpetontidae. Under the order Allocaudata, these creatures are more closely related to frogs and salamanders than caecilians, though the two groups have had hundreds of millions of years to evolve into different forms, as is immediately obvious. Like their sister group Albanerpetontidae, and to a lesser degree living caecilians, Ichthyander are scaled. However, these scales are not the scales of sauropsids, keratinous material formed in the epidermis, instead being ossified plates in dermis somewhat like those of fish. Thus, the scales do not provide as great a protection against desiccation or, more importantly, the salt water of its ocean home. Ichthyander, being fully aquatic, relies on a number of adaptions that distinguish it from its albanerpetontid relatives. Hardy terrestrial ancestors afforded allocaudatans skin resistant to water transfer at the loss of breathing through the skin. Thus, marine salamanders instead rely on external gills to breathe.

External gills are basal to lissamphibians, as they found in fossil temnospondyls and are likely the ancestral state for all tetrapods. Such gills appear to be very beneficial in oxygen poor water, found in everything from axolotls to bichirs, and retention into adulthood is common among amphibians with the aforementioned neotenic salamanders. Also not unheard of to lose the external nature of these gills, as among the anurans, due to their exposure to damage. However, the marine salamander adapted different strategy to shield its external gills, retained from its larval stage, evolving plate-like cartilaginous “guards” which sandwich the gills between them and the body. The rest of the body is covered in rubbery, thick skin.

While the true salamanders who possess gills into adulthood are quite neotenic, it would be a mistake to believe it the same for marine salamanders. Ichthyander possesses distinct larval forms, commonly referred to, somewhat confusingly, as flukes, which hatch from eggs retained with in the female. Unlike most amphibians, who employ r-selected reproductive strategies that produce numerous offspring at once, marine salamanders only produce a few young at a time. Seemingly serpentine or vermiform in appearance, not until the 1700s were these sea flukes recognized as the larva of marine salamanders. Indeed, classical descriptions of pregnant marine salamanders believed the flukes to be internal parasites, hence their common name.

The ancestors of both piscanimans and albanerpetontids, like the albanerpetontids themselves, were rather small terrestrial amphibians. Icthyander is quite large, as has struggled to pull the most out of alterations of their ancestors reduced skeleton. The giant marine salamander only appears humanoid in water, having a much more flattened appearance in air, lacking constant water pressure and developed ribs. In fact, the difference in appearance was significant enough that there was some contention among very early zoologists over whether they even represented the same species. Though the species is by no means not doomed if it comes onto land, its movement and continued survival is severely hindered. However, marine salamanders have one trick up there sleeve to maintain their body strength and structure; though marine salamanders may not be considered turtle enough for the turtle club, some of their scales have spread into wide scutes or plates.

All modern species of the marine salamander live in and around the Mediterranean Sea. Though carnivorous, marine salamanders due not pursue prey through open water except opportunistically, instead preying upon invertebrates found on the sea floor. Unlike the vast majority of aquatic vertebrates, the tail does not provide the major propelling force for the organism in water. Indeed, members of the genus Ichthyander have such long, thin tails that medieval bestiaries often portrayed them as tailless. Instead, marine salamanders swim by undulating their body and paddling with their hindlimbs. The front limbs of marine salamanders are reserved for manipulation. While this may initially seem bizarre in an aquatic animals, marine salamanders will use rocks to bash open hard shelled organisms and simply manipulate or carry food. To aid in this, marine salamanders possess opposable thumbs. This may initially seem bizarre as an average reader might associate opposable thumbs with primates, but several mammalian lineages and the anuran genus Phyllomedusa all evolved opposable thumbs alongside the members of Piscanima.

Much about what we know of the giant marine salamander comes from Dr. Kurt Leopold, once the world’s leading expert on the genus. His academic reputation fell into shambles when his past as a former member of the Nazi party, who fled Germany to immigrate to the United States after the end of WWII, was revealed. Outside of the herpetological field, however, he was best known for his quasi-terrorist actions in Florida after his past was revealed but before he was officially let go from his position. Using a chemical he referred to as ZAAt salts, sometimes suggested as Z=A Astatine, which, lacking neutrons, would be extremely unstable under any current understanding of nuclear physics, though serious chemists reject this in favor of Leopold merely using a code name for another chemical. Post-mortem analysis of some affected organisms suggest that it in some fashion caused niacin deficiencies in vertebrates exposed to it, leading to aggression and dementia alongside physical deterioration. A likely purposeful release of the chemical into local waters triggered a swarm of crazed walking catfish, however, no serious effects did occur in the local populace. More infamously, an illegally released I. masculum accidently drowned a young local woman when attempting to copulate with her. Prior to the extradition decision going through, Leopold disappeared; his girlfriend at the time, Dr. Marsha Walsh, killed herself by allowing herself to drown in the ocean. Rumors that the doctor possessed some sort of Nazi immortality chemical are ridiculous, his youthful appearance even into middle age was merely the results of good genes. What happened to him after this is unknown.

Prior to Leopold’s work, the Western Marine Salamander Icthyander feijoo was seen as representative of the entire family. Found in western Mediterranean, it is smaller, typically reaching only 3 feet (0.9 m) in length. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Leopold’s work showed that the giant marine salamander possesses a unique lifestyle. A good portion of this behavior involves its dens. Found in the Aegean Sea, the species roasts in rocky underwater caves found along coastlines, the marine salamanders in the western Mediterranean lack this behavior. Pregnant females will go dormant for several months in these underwater caves.

While the appearance and lifestyle of the marine salamanders is somewhat comparable to sea otters, the giant marine salamander is more similar to dolphins in sociability and, possibly, intellect. Members of the species are relatively social, and it appears there tool use, more complex than others of the genus, it based on teaching rather than instinct. This helps to belay the notion that all animals outside of mammals and birds are unintelligent. Larval individuals are much less intelligent and social, but mothers will try to tend to them to some degree. Another trait the marine salamanders share with dolphins is their rampant sexuality. All marine salamanders possess a structure homologous to the penis, though whether this appeared in their terrestrial ancestors or once they took to the sea is not known. Giant marine salamanders have been described on numerous occasions attempting to fornicate with both other species, including humans, and even some inanimate objects. In the most ironic such an instance, several members of the cast of the 1996 c-movie soft-porno “Invasion of the Fishf***ers” were approached by salamanders during filming.

The giant marine salamander is also well known among followers of certain esoteric beliefs. To them, giant marine salamanders are the remnants of some ancient race, and occasionally the direct ancestors of humans. Several influential figures in alternative religions, such as Andrea Talbott and Doreena Suave, have claimed to have hypnotically regressed to these mystical antediluvian men.

This idea appears to originate in 1936 with the Eastern European occult group Siniy Klyk (синий клык). Though possessing a Russian name, in this case the group also was present in former Czechoslovakia. Noting Johann Jakob Scheuchzer’s 1726 of Andrias scheuchzeri as a pre-deluge human as well as certain theories of embryology, Jakub van Toch imagined that humans were descended from amphibians, who he termed the Devonian Man – Ichthyostega. Under his view, the Ichthyander are other descendants who never left the water. The Siniy Klykm believe that they are fully sapient sapient, inhabiting vast underwater cities and worshiping a mixture of Sumerian and Babylonian deities including Dagon, Adapa and a hydra-esque serpent identified with both Mushmahhu and Bashmu. Later in life, van Toch claimed to have even visited a city of Ichthyander located off of the coast of Sumatra. The notion of marine salamanders as proto-humans proved very popular among certain circles from the British Oannes Society, to de Sarre’s theories of initial bipedalism, to the very name of the Commillos de la Hidra,

In an interesting twist on these themes, during the early 1940s, Michael Thaler, a child attending Sunnydale Elementary School in Santa Barbara, California, became convinced that many of the individuals in his school were, in fact, monstrous marine salamanders in disguise. Luckily, due to both the quick action of several school employees and Michael’s small stature, few injuries resulted from his mania before he was successfully detained. Interestingly, after having been detained, he described several highly specific anatomical details of the marine salamander not widely known to the questioning psychologist in the midst of his paranoid rants. This was especially unusual as no specimens had yet ever been in display at American zoos or aquariums, and elementary schoolers are not frequent purveyors of scientific papers written in German. In an amazing coincidence, however, the Hartford Biological Depot, an early conservation organization, was holding several specimens in a temporary location located nearby before being transported upstate to the Sequoia Park Zoo upstate. Investigations revealed that Michael had disappeared the day prior, neither coming to school nor returning home the previous night. No witnesses observed exactly how he returned to school the following day. It was generally accepted that the delusions occurred as a coping mechanism for whatever trauma he may have experienced, though no clear picture of what happened to him emerged. Information on Thaler’s later life is in short supply, though it appears he may have suffered a relapse into a delusional state in high school, believing that the swim team was slowly being transformed by their coach into marine salamanders.

This is certainly not the only time marine salamanders have been viewed as monsters. A fictionalized killer salamander appeared in the 1950s B-movie Aquamaniac and its numerous sequels. However the notoriety of these films draws more from the fact that the monster in many later films the titular Aquamaniac was in fact played by dishonorably discharged colonel and fugitive John Smith rather than any actual cinematic quality. It is thought that this franchise’s portrayal of the marine salamander may have inspired the descriptions of cryptid known as the Thetis Lake Monster.

It is quite common to see supposed sightings of marine salamanders in unusual locals, but, as many of my readers might know, the notion of an introduced population of marine salamanders is not quite so bizarre as it might appear. For decades, a stable population of giant marine salamanders has existed on the eastern coast of South America, with reliable sightings of them occasionally following rivers inland, such as in the 1954 Amazonian zoological expedition. The source of this population is not entirely clear, but the most likely explanation is this. It is known that Dr. Baltasar Salvador, an Argentine herpetologist, held a number of giant marine salamanders for study on in his seaside lab during the 1920s. It is generally assumed that these specimens where accidentally released or intentionally introduced into the ocean, though no records confirm or deny the fates of these animals. Since then, sightings migrated northwards along the Argentine and Uruguayan coasts for until reaching Southern Brazil, where the population is now relatively stable. Not all find this explanation acceptable, with alternate explanations ranging from, since Ichthyander are Devonian men, they obviously lived everywhere on the planet, to the comparatively more plausible notion that a group of Ichthyander were wept out into the Atlantic ocean by storms and eventually made their way to South America on their own. Proponents of these natural hypothesis point to the mythical Brazilian raping shape-shifter, the encantado, and cryptozoological reports of similar creatures to the giant marine salamander in locations or times rendered impossible by the mainstream explanation.