Backlit Tiger Salamander Larvae

Backlit photo of two Tiger Salamander larvae. The strong light shining through their bodies gives a kind of x-ray effect to the photos.

I brought a few Tiger Salamander larvae home a couple of weeks ago (July 5, 2022). I was planning to use a photo-aquarium to get a better look at some of the Leeches on the Tiger Salamander larvae.

Photographic the Leeches went pretty well, I’ve posted about it here.  What I wasn’t expecting, though, was how cool the Tiger Salamander larvae appeared in the photo aquarium.

I used the fiber optic light from a microscope as the light source. That let me light up the larvae quite strongly from arbitrary directions. Since it was a fiber optic light, I did not need to worry  about overheating the Salamanders.

Three Tiger Salamander larvae, backlit.

I thought that I was going to have problems getting the light to shine on the larvae. I assumed that the larvae would move away once the ‘spotlight’ was on them.

I was surprised to find that the larvae didn’t try to avoid the light. They might even have been attracted to it.

The strong light shining through the larvae had an ‘x-ray’ effect, so that I was able to photograph some of the internals of the larvae.

Closeup of a Tiger Salamander larva’s head, with strong back-lighting.

Some of my favorite shots were of the Salamanders’ gills. The gills were so intricate, and so delicate. I could even see blood vessels running through the gills.

Close-up of external gills on a Tiger Salamander larva. You can see the dark blood vessels running through the gills. I _think_ the black specks are chromatophores in the larva’s skin.

I’m astonished by strangeness, and the beauty,  and the delicacy, of these creatures.