Head to head
Lizard vs Salamander
A lizard and a salamander look almost interchangeable at a glance, and the two names are often mixed up. They belong to entirely different classes of animal, though, and a close look at the skin, toes, and where the animal lives settles it quickly.
| Lizard | Salamander | |
|---|---|---|
| Animal class | Reptile | Amphibian |
| Skin | Dry, scaly, waterproof | Moist, smooth, no scales |
| Toes | Clawed | No claws |
| Ear openings | Visible | None |
| Breathing | Lungs only | Lungs plus skin; some skin only |
| Eggs | Shelled, laid on land (or live birth) | Jelly-coated, usually laid in water |
| Larval stage | None; hatch as miniatures | Usually a gilled aquatic larva |
| Can bask in the sun | Yes | No, would dry out |
Lizard vs Salamander: common questions
How do I quickly tell a lizard from a salamander?
Look at the skin and, if you can, the feet. A lizard's skin is dry to the touch and clearly scaly, often shiny or beaded, and its toes end in small claws. A salamander's skin is moist, soft, and smooth or slightly bumpy, with a faint sheen of mucus, and its toes are blunt with no claws. Where you find the animal is also a strong hint: a lizard sunning itself on a warm rock, wall, or path in the daytime is almost never a salamander, while a small tailed creature under a damp log, in leaf litter, in a cave, or at the edge of a pond, especially at night or after rain, is almost never a lizard.
Are newts lizards?
No. A newt is a salamander, specifically one of the semi-aquatic salamanders in the family Salamandridae, and therefore an amphibian. Newts are often mistaken for lizards because several species spend part of the year on land looking superficially lizard-like, but they have the moist, scaleless skin, clawless toes, and lack of ear openings that mark a salamander, and they return to water to breed, laying eggs that hatch into gilled larvae. The confusion is old enough to be baked into some regional names, but a newt is no more a lizard than a frog is.
Do lizards and salamanders ever live in the same places?
Yes, in temperate and tropical regions their ranges overlap widely, but they tend to use different parts of the habitat. Lizards occupy the warm, dry, sunlit microhabitats: open ground, rock faces, tree trunks in the sun, walls, and sand. Salamanders occupy the cool, damp, shaded ones: the underside of logs and stones, leaf litter, burrows, seeps, streambanks, and caves, and they are active mainly at night and in wet weather when lizards are hidden away. So a single woodland can hold plenty of both, with the lizards on the sunny edges and the salamanders in the moist interior, and the two rarely meet.