Giant salamander (giant) is a genus of tailed amphibians of the family of hidden gibers and is represented by two species: Japanese giant salamander ( Andrias japonicus) and the Chinese giant salamander ( Andrias davidianus), which differ in the location of the tubercles on the head and in the habitat. According to the name, the Chinese giant salamander lives in the mountain rivers of the central part of East China, and the Japanese one - in the rivers of Japan.
Today it is the largest amphibian, which can reach 160 cm in length and weigh up to 180 kg. The officially recorded maximum age of a giant salamander is 55 years.
This unique amphibian millions of years ago coexisted with dinosaurs and managed to survive and adapt to new living conditions. The giant salamander leads an aquatic life, is active at dusk and at night, prefers cold, fast-flowing mountain streams and rivers, damp caves and underground rivers.
The dark brown color with darker vague spots makes the salamander invisible against the background of the rocky bottom of the rivers. The body and large head of the salamander are flattened, the tail, which is almost half of the entire length, is oar-shaped, the front legs have 4 fingers, and the hind legs have 5 fingers each, the eyes without eyelids are set wide apart, and the nostrils are very close.
The salamander is distinguished by poor vision, which is compensated by an excellent sense of smell, with the help of which it finds frogs, fish, crustaceans, insects, slowly moving along the bottom of the river. The salamander obtains food, lurking at the bottom of the river, with a sharp lunge of the head, grabs and holds the victim with jaws with small teeth. The metabolism of the salamander is slow, which allows it to go without food for a long time.
In August-September, the salamanders begin their breeding season. The female lays several hundred eggs, 6-7 mm in size, resembling a long rosary, in horizontal burrows under water at a depth of up to 3 meters, which is absolutely not typical for amphibians. Caviar ripens for 60-70 days at a water temperature of 12 ° C. In this case, as a rule, the male constantly provides aeration of the eggs, creating a stream of water with his tail.
The larvae are about 30 mm long, three pairs of external gills, primordial limbs and a long tail with a wide fin fold. Little salamanders are constantly in the water for up to one and a half years, until their lungs are finally formed, and they can go to land. But the salamander can breathe through the skin. At the same time, the sexual maturity of the giant salamander begins.
The meat of the gigantic salamander is quite tasty and edible, which led to a decrease in the population of the animal and its inclusion in the Red Book as a species that is threatened with extinction. So, at present in Japan, the salamander practically does not occur in nature, but is bred in special nurseries.
In China, in Zhangjiajie Park, a state base for breeding salamanders has been created, where a constant temperature of 16-20 ° C is maintained in a 600-meter tunnel, which is ideal conditions for the reproduction of salamanders.
What is it? Shooting the movie "Alien-5"? Photoshop? No. This is quite an earthly animal. I didn’t believe it right away. Those who remember from the previous blog already know, but for new friends I'll tell you. Reading the details ...
According to local old-timers, this impressive specimen seems to be just a tadpole in comparison with the salamanders that were found in the past in the vicinity of the city.
The legend of the 17th century tells of a salamander, or, in local terms, a khanzaki, 10 meters long, which ruled the roads and devoured horses and cows.
Then a hero named Mitsui Hikoshiro was found, who allowed the dragon to swallow him along with his trusty sword, which he used to kill the monster.
But it turned out that the dragon had cast a spell on the city. The crop failed, people began to die a strange death, and the hero himself died.
Very soon, the townspeople realized that the spirit of the dragon was roaming the country, and they erected a temple in the city, in which hanzaki sacrifices began.
However, scientists have their own interest in amphibians. Firstly, it is a surprisingly archaic creature that rightfully claims to be a living fossil. In addition, this salamander turned out to be surprisingly resistant to the effects of the chytrid fungus, which killed many amphibians from Australia to the Andes.
People who want to see the unique amphibian flock to the science center in Maniwa, 800 km west of Tokyo.
We are talking about a giant salamander, which is almost 1.7 meters long.
Japanese giant salamander (lat.Andrias japonicus)in appearance it resembles another species - the Chinese gigantic salamander (lat. Andras davidianus), and differs only in the location of the tubercles on the head. The average body length is more than 1 meter, it can reach length up to 1.44 meters and weight up to 25 kg.
Giant salamanders have a large flattened head with eyes devoid of eyelids, a body with a noticeable glenoacetobular (between the limbs of one side of the body) skin fold and lumpy skin, a laterally compressed oar-shaped tail, short and thick limbs with four toes on the front legs and five on rear.
The size and appearance of the skeleton of a gigantic salamander from the Miocene deposits of Germany so struck the imagination of the Viennese physician A. Scheuchtser that in 1724 he described it as Homo diluvitestis ("a man who witnessed the worldwide flood"), apparently deciding that skeletal materials are everything that remains of the biblical hero who could not escape on the Noah's ark. Only Georges Cuvier, the famous zoologist at the turn of the XYII and XYIII centuries, attributed this "man" to amphibians.,
The Japanese giant salamander lives in cold mountain rivers and streams with fast currents, spending the day under washed-up shores or large rocks in the western part of Honshu Island (north of Gifu Prefecture) and on the islands of Shikoku and Kyushu (Oita Prefecture), choosing heights from 300 to 1000 m above sea level. Adults tolerate low temperatures relatively well. For example, a case is described when a gigantic salamander calmly survived a drop in water temperature to zero in January 1838. In the aquarium of the Moscow Zoo, even a crust of ice appeared on the water surface during cold nights.
The giant salamander is active at dusk and at night, when it crawls out to hunt. It feeds on small fish and amphibians, crustaceans and insects. She is also capable of prolonged starvation - there are cases when in captivity the salamanders did not eat for two months without visible harm to themselves.
The giant salamander can both seek out prey, orienting itself with the help of the sense of smell, and lie in wait for it, lurking, and seize it with a sharp movement of its head to the side. In captivity, cases of cannibalism (eating their own kind) have been noted.
Under natural conditions, at a depth of 1 - 3 m in a coastal underwater burrow in August - September, the female lays several hundred eggs with a diameter of 6 - 7 mm in the form of clear cords or beads. The male, in a specific way showing care for the offspring, protects the clutch and, with the movements of the tail, creates a stream of water around it, thus increasing the aeration of the eggs. At a water temperature of 12 - 13 ° C, egg development lasts 2 - 2.5 months.
The gills disappear in the larvae, probably in a year (according to other sources, in the third year of life), when their body length reaches 20 cm. In summer, adults molt almost monthly.
The meat of giant salamanders is of gastronomic importance. At the beginning and middle of the last century, in the markets of the cities of Osako and Kyoto, local residents sold medium-sized salamanders for 12 - 24 guilders. At the same time, Chinese and Japanese doctors advised the use of boiled meat and broth from gigantic salamanders as an anti-infectious agent in the treatment of consumption and diseases of the digestive system. However, due to the rarity of the animal, even then the "medicine" from it cost a lot of money. As a result of overfishing, giant salamanders are now under protection: they are included in the Red Book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and in Annex II of the International Convention on Trade in Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITEC). The catch of the Japanese salamander from nature is extremely limited, although it is quite successfully bred on Japanese farms.
Salamanders are distinguished by poor eyesight, they rely on other senses to determine the position in space and the position of other objects.
The maximum recorded lifespan of a giant salamander is 55 years.
Also, this species of salamanders is able to regenerate, which is often noted in this genus of amphibians.
Here's an interesting video ...
"The skeleton of this creature is almost identical to fossils that are 30 million years old," says Takeyoshi Tohimoto, director of the Hanzaki Institute near Hyogo.
Hanzaki salamander (Andriasjaponicus) has only two modern related species - this chinese giant salamander (A... Davidianus ) , which is so close to Japanese that it can interbreed with it, and a much smaller salamander Cryptobranchusalleganiensis , living in the southeastern United States.
"They are considered very primitive creatures, in part because they are the only salamanders that reproduce by external fertilization, like fish," says Don Church, an amphibian specialist with conservation organization Conservation International.
Usually these salamanders sit quietly under the river bank or hide in the leaves, waiting for the appearance of prey, which is grabbed by powerful jaws.
A feat worthy of a great warrior
When the chytrid fungus appeared in Asia ten years ago, no one could have imagined that the Japanese salamanders were to blame.
But last year, a group of researchers from the Institute of Environmental Problems of Japan, led by Koichi Goka, published an article from which it followed that this fungus settled exclusively on the skin of giant salamanders, which did not suffer from this in any way.
This discovery could help study the biology of this fungus, which kills millions of amphibians around the world.
It turned out that bacteria live on the skin of Japanese salamanders that can resist peptides secreted by the fungus.
If, on this basis, it is possible to isolate substances that can reproduce this effect, scientists will be able to obtain a universal antifungal agent that will save millions of frogs and toads.
And this will be a feat worthy of the heroic Japanese warrior Mitsui Hikoshiro.
Giant salamanders live in mountain rivers and streams with cold running water. Inhabits the western part of Fr. Hondo north to Gifu Prefecture. It is also known from a small about. Kyushu. Inhabits mountain rivers with clean cold water at altitudes from 300 to 1000 m. at. m.
They spend most of their time in burrows and underwater niches under the banks overhanging the water or in deep pits among stones, sunken tree trunks, stumps and snags. This gigantic salamander is called not by chance. Her body can be up to 160 cm long and even more, while having a mass of up to 28-30 kg. This is a whole pig! But you can catch a piglet with your bare hands, but you cannot take a salamander, if you catch it, you cannot hold it. Her entire body is covered with a layer of mucus, and she slips out easily. In addition, large salamanders have great physical strength, and their bites are dangerous: the mouth of the animal is armed with many small and sharp teeth, with the help of which the salamander holds the prey, intercepts it and swallows it entirely.
The activity of the giant salamander is twilight and nocturnal. Salamanders rarely come out of the water to the shores of reservoirs, usually after floods caused by heavy rains.
Initially, the salamander appears to be just a sunken stump of a tree. Its huge head and body are, as it were, flattened from above, the long tail is compressed from the sides, the legs are short and thick, the skin of the body is warty, and on the sides it is folded, which makes its contours vague. The eyes are like beads, have no eyelids and are set wide apart, and there is almost no bulge. The nostrils at the end of the muzzle are very close together.
The coloration of the upper part of the body of a gigantic salamander is dark brown with dark gray streaks and very dark shapeless spots. The belly is gray with dark blurred spots and small specks. All this very well disguises the salamander among a variety of bottom objects, stones and aquatic vegetation. The salamander either looks for its prey, slowly moving along the bottom of the reservoir, or stalking, lying on the bottom and not showing any movements. But as soon as a fish, frog, insect or crayfish get close, a sharp, lightning-fast movement of the head follows - and the prey is in the teeth. It feeds on fish, amphibians and other small animals.
The Japanese giant salamander molts 4-5 times a year. The cuticle that lags behind during molting slides from the entire body in shreds, flakes and is partially eaten by molting animals. During the molt, which lasts several days, the salamander makes frequent movements with its body, as if vibrating with it. This achieves the flushing of the lagging areas of the discarded cuticle from the body surface.
During breeding, salamanders keep in pairs. The male not only protects the nest, but also helps better aeration. With his strong tail, he periodically moves the water, does not allow it to stagnate: the embryos need oxygen.
In August-September, the female lays several hundred small eggs with a diameter of 6-7 mm. The clutch is usually placed in a coastal burrow at a depth of 1-3 m. The male protects the eggs, which creates a stream of water with his tail for better aeration of the clutch.
The development of eggs lasts 60-80 days, depending on the water temperature. This duration of development in comparison with the development of eggs of many other amphibians (2-8 days) is explained by the fact that the eggs of gigantic salamanders develop at a temperature of + 12-15 ° С.In warm water, salamanders do not survive: up to + 18 ° С they somehow suffer, and above begin to suffocate. The larvae that emerge from the eggs turn into adult forms after about 11-12 months. The length of the larvae emerging from the eggs is about 30 mm. Salamanders grow quickly, and they have a good appetite.
In Japan, the gigantic salamander, to put it simply ... they ate it, in China ... they eat it up, and if the persecution of gourmets does not stop, then in the very near future the giant salamander - the largest amphibian animal of our time - will have to be bitterly blacklisted animals that have disappeared forever from the face of the Earth. The giant salamander is listed in the International Red Book as an endangered animal. But here's the trouble. This salamander has very tasty meat, which is why people pursue it.
In the old days, salamander hunting was one of the types of sports hunting, but now this hunting has become illegal, has turned into an ordinary poaching for the pleasure of tasting a delicacy. The Japanese tried to breed giant salamanders in artificial conditions, and their many years of attempts were crowned with success. Imitating the natural habitat of these animals has proven difficult. Special nurseries with deep flow channels were created. The eggs laid by the salamanders were removed and placed in an incubator, where their development took place.
The species is currently under strict protection. Trapping and export are extremely limited. In Japan, it is successfully bred on farms.
But I remembered who she reminds me of! Yes, that's it!
Tianzishan Geopark, famous for its mountains of amazing beauty, and Soxiyu Park, notable, first of all, for the huge Huanglong Cave, the largest hall of which can accommodate ten thousand people. In the last five thousand years, there have been no significant earthquakes, so tall openwork-air stone pillars, overgrown with subtropical vegetation, surrounded by clouds and sung by James Cameron in his famous film "Avatar", live and thrive there.
Pure water flows from the mountains, and salamanders are an indicator of the ecological well-being of the area. Chinese giant salamanders are endemic, now they live in the wild only in the Hunan province, these amphibians survived the dinosaurs. It was they who puzzled the biochemists.
People have long been trying to understand how salamanders regenerate severed tails, limbs, and jaws. At the site of the injury, after contact with mucus that constantly covers their skin, they form a protective membrane that protects against blood loss, and subsequently, at the site of the missing limb, a blastema appears - a mass of non-specialized cells that are waiting for the "order" of the body in order to acquire "specialization" "And become cells of the skin, muscles, bones and blood vessels. It is curious that salamanders are able to regenerate not only limbs, but also individual organs of the body, for example, the eye lens or intestines.
In adult mammals (unlike embryos), such a miracle will not happen - cell specialization has already ended. But interestingly, humans, like salamanders, have genes that are necessary for tissue regeneration. But our system of first defense does not allow these genes to work. Apparently, in the course of evolution, the immune and regenerative systems became incompatible with each other, and the body had to choose. Salamanders use primitive regenerative, and humans use immune. It protects us from infections, but at the same time blocks "self-repair". But the ancient "instruction" for growing new organs is stored somewhere there! But how do you make it "turn on" when required?
“For your information: the giant salamander is a genus of tailed amphibians of the family of hidden gabers and is represented by two species: the Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus) and the Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus), which differ in size, habitat and the location of tubercles on the head,” says Pavel Alexandrovich ... - Today, it is the largest amphibian, which can reach 2 m in length, weight up to 100 kg. The officially recorded maximum age of a giant salamander is 100 years. This unique amphibian millions of years ago coexisted with dinosaurs and managed to survive and adapt to new living conditions. The giant salamander leads an aquatic life, is active at dusk and at night, prefers cold and clean mountain streams and rivers, damp caves and underground rivers. The dark brown color with darker vague spots makes the salamander invisible against the background of the rocky bottom of the rivers. The body and large head of the salamander are flattened, the tail, which is almost half of the entire length, is oar-shaped, the front legs have four fingers, and the hind legs have five fingers, the eyes without eyelids are set wide apart, and the nostrils are very close.
The salamander is distinguished by poor eyesight, which is compensated by an excellent sense of smell, with the help of which it finds frogs, fish, crustaceans, insects, slowly moving along the bottom of the river. The salamander obtains food, lurking at the bottom of the river. With a sharp lunge of the head, she grabs and holds the victim with jaws with small teeth. The metabolism of the salamander is slow, which allows it to go without food for a long time.
In August-September, the salamanders begin their breeding season. The female lays eggs in horizontal burrows under water at a depth of up to three meters, which is absolutely not typical for amphibians.
Caviar ripens for 60-70 days at a water temperature of about 12 ° C. In this case, as a rule, the male constantly provides aeration of the eggs, creating a stream of water with his tail. The larvae are about 30 mm long, have three pairs of external gills, primordia of limbs and a long tail with a wide fin fold. Little salamanders are constantly in the water for up to one and a half years, until their lungs are finally formed, and they can go to land. But the salamander can breathe through the skin. At the same time, the sexual maturity of the giant salamander begins. The meat of the giant salamander is quite tasty and edible, which led to a decrease in the population of the animal and its inclusion in the Red Book as a species that is threatened with extinction.
Outwardly, the salamander resembles a huge lizard, being its "relative". It is a classic endemic to the Japanese islands, that is, it lives in the wild only there. This species is one of the largest salamanders on Earth.
Description of the species
This type of salamander was discovered in the 18th century. In 1820, it was first discovered and described by a German scientist named Siebold during his scientific activities in Japan. The length of the animal's body reaches one and a half meters along with the tail. The mass of an adult salamander is about 35 kilograms.
The shape of the animal's body is not distinguished by grace, as, for example, in lizards. It is slightly flattened, distinguished by a large head and a tail compressed in a vertical plane. Little salamanders and adolescents have gills that disappear when they reach puberty.
The salamander has a very slow metabolism. This circumstance allows her to do without food for a long time, as well as survive in conditions of insufficient food supply. Poor vision led to an increase in other senses. Giant salamanders have a keen hearing and a good sense of smell.
Another interesting feature of salamanders is the ability to regenerate tissues. This term is understood as the restoration of tissues and even entire organs, if they have been lost for any reason. The most striking and familiar example to many is the growth of a new tail in lizards instead of the fact that they easily and voluntarily leave when trying to catch them.
Lifestyle
This species of salamanders lives exclusively in water and is active at night. For a comfortable habitat, the animal needs a current, therefore, salamanders often settle in fast mountain streams and rivers. The water temperature is also important - the lower the better.
Salamanders feed on fish and various crustaceans. In addition, she often eats small amphibians and aquatic insects.
The giant salamander lays small eggs, up to 7 millimeters in diameter. As a "nest" a special burrow is used, dug out at a depth of 1-3 meters. In one clutch, as a rule, several hundred eggs are in need of constant renewal of the surrounding aquatic environment. The male is responsible for creating an artificial current, which periodically disperses the water in the clutch with its tail.
Eggs ripen for almost a month and a half. The small salamanders that were born are larvae no more than 30 millimeters long. They breathe through their gills and are able to move independently.
Salamander and man
Despite the unsightly appearance, this type of salamander has nutritional value. Salamander meat is tender and tasty. It is actively eaten by the inhabitants of Japan, being considered a delicacy.
As usual, uncontrolled hunting of these animals has led to a sharp reduction in their numbers, and today salamanders are grown for food on special farms. In the wild, the population is a concern. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has awarded the species the status of "being in a condition close to threatened". This means that in the absence of measures to support and create optimal conditions for life, salamanders can begin to die out.
Today, the number of salamanders is not large, but rather stable. They live off the coast of the Japanese island of Honshu, as well as the islands of Shikoku and Kyushu.
GISPANESE SALAMANDRA (Andrias), a genus of tailed amphibians of the family of hidden gabers, includes two species:
chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus)
japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus)
These are tailed amphibians of the family of the phantom gills.
The Japanese giant salamander and the Chinese giant salamander differ in the location of the bumps on the head and in the habitat.
Today it is the largest amphibian.
Reaches 160 cm in length, weighs up to 180 kg and can live up to 150 years.
But we met them only when they were up to 55 years old.
Dark brown with dark blurry spots. With this color, the salamander is invisible against the background of the rocky bottom of the rivers.
The body and large head are flattened, the tail is almost half of the entire length,
similar to an oar paddle.
On the front legs they have 4 toes, and on the hind legs - 5 toes. And the legs are short and thick
The eyes do not have eyelids and are set wide apart, while the nostrils, on the contrary, are very close together.
The skin is soft, warty, forms longitudinal folds on the sides of the body; the same folds border the rear edges of the legs. The giant salamander absorbs oxygen through the skin. The presence of folds of skin on the sides of the body serves to increase the surface area of \u200b\u200bthe body, which helps to absorb even more oxygen.
Salamanders have poor eyesight.
It is aquatic, active at dusk and at night, prefers cold, fast-flowing mountain streams and fast-flowing rivers, damp caves and underground rivers.
Spends the day under washed-up shores or large rocks in the western part of Honshu Island (north of Gifu Prefecture) and on the islands of Shikoku and Kyushu (Oita Prefecture), choosing altitudes from 300 to 1000 m above sea level.
Adults tolerate low temperatures relatively well.
For example, a case is described when a gigantic salamander calmly survived a drop in water temperature to zero in January 1838.
In the aquarium of the Moscow Zoo, even a crust of ice appeared on the water surface during cold nights.
The salamander is distinguished by poor vision, which is compensated by an excellent sense of smell, with the help of which it finds frogs, fish, crustaceans, insects, slowly moving along the bottom of the river.
The salamander obtains food, lurking at the bottom of the river, with a sharp lunge of the head, captures and holds the victim with jaws with small teeth.
The giant salamander can both look for prey, orienting itself with the help of the sense of smell,
so lie in wait for her, hiding
The metabolism of the salamander is slow, which allows it to go without food for a long time.
The metabolism of salamanders is slow, they can go for weeks without food. It feeds on fish and small amphibians, crustaceans and insects.
She is also capable of prolonged starvation - there are cases when in captivity the salamanders did not eat for two months without visible harm to themselves., And seize with a sharp movement of the head to the side. In captivity, cases of cannibalism (eating their own kind) have been noted.
Japanese giant salamanders begin to breed at the end of August, when they gather in small groups at the nests. Males are very aggressive towards each other, and often many die as a result of injuries received by them in mating fights.
The female lays several hundred eggs, 6-7 mm in size, resembling long rosary beads, in horizontal burrows under water at a depth of up to 3 meters, which is absolutely not typical for amphibians.
To moisten the clutch, the eggs are constantly smeared with mucus, and one of the parents (usually the male) has to fan them with his tail, providing a continuous flow of fresh air.
Caviar ripens for 60-70 days at a water temperature of 12 ° C. ... The larvae are about 30 mm long, three pairs of external gills, primordial limbs and a long tail with a wide fin fold.
Little salamanders are constantly in the water for up to one and a half years, until their lungs are finally formed, and they can go to land. But the salamander can breathe through the skin. At the same time, the gigantic salamander becomes sexually mature.
Although gigantic salamanders do not have natural enemies, their numbers are declining as a result of the hunt for them by the local population as food, and the loss of their habitat due to deforestation.
The meat of the gigantic salamander is quite tasty and edible, which led to a decrease in the animal population. So, at present in Japan, the salamander practically does not occur in nature, but is bred in special nurseries.
At the beginning and middle of the last century, in the markets of the cities of Osako and Kyoto, local residents sold medium-sized salamanders for 12 - 24 guilders.
At the same time, Chinese and Japanese doctors advised the use of boiled meat and broth from giant salamanders as an anti-infectious agent in the treatment of consumption and diseases of the digestive system.
However, due to the rarity of the animal, even then the "medicine" from it cost a lot of money. As a result of overfishing, giant salamanders are now under protection: they are included in the Red Book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and in Annex II of the International Convention on Trade in Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITEC). The catch of the Japanese salamander from nature is extremely limited, although it is quite successfully bred on Japanese farms.
This unique amphibian millions of years ago coexisted with dinosaurs and managed to survive and adapt to new living conditions.
The species was first described and cataloged in the 1820s, when one of the salamanders was caught by the German naturalist Philip Franz von Siebold, who was then working in Japan and living on Dejima Island in Nagasaki Prefecture.
He sent the captured salamander to the city of Leiden (Netherlands).
Probably the extinct species of giant salamander (Andrias scheuchzeri or Salamandra scheuchzeri), described in the 18th century from the Miocene deposits of Germany, belongs to the same species.
The size and appearance of the skeleton of a gigantic salamander from the Miocene deposits of Germany so amazed the imagination of the Viennese physician A. Scheuchtser that in 1724 he described it as Homo diluvitestis ("a man who witnessed the world's flood"), apparently deciding that skeletal materials are everything that remains of the biblical hero who could not escape on the Noah's ark.
Only Georges Cuvier, the famous zoologist at the turn of the XYII and XYIII centuries, attributed this "man" to amphibians.
The first giant salamanders appeared in European aquariums in the middle of the 18th century.
One of them was brought to Kharkov from a round-the-world voyage on the ship "Gaidamak" in 1877 by the ship's doctor P. N. Savchenko. Even during the life of the animal, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences agreed to purchase this individual for 300 rubles after its death.
The giant salamanders first came to Moscow at the request of the famous Russian zoologist, director of the Moscow State University Zoological Museum A.P. Bogdanov, for whom the Russian envoy to the Japanese court and plenipotentiary minister K.V. Struve in 1886 organized the delivery of two copies.
One of them lived in the Moscow Zoo, and the other, who died on the way from Japan to St. Petersburg on the cruiser "Europe", was brought to the Moscow State University Zoological Museum and is now on display.