Black Jumping Salamander

Ixalotriton niger is a long, slender salamander with a wide head, protuberant eyes, long limbs, large hands and feet and a long, gradually tapering tail. It grows to a total length of nearly 6 centimetres (2.4 in) and is a glossy black colour. At night it changes to a chocolate brown colour. The snout may have a small white patch and the tips or the toes are red, perhaps because of an absence of pigment allowing the vascular tissue below to show through.

Ixalotriton niger is found at about 1,100 metres (3,600 ft) above sea level on the Atlantic side of the Northern Highland Mountains in Chiapas State in south west Mexico. The area where it is endemic is composed of fissured limestone crags clothed in an evergreen forest rich in epiphytes including mosses, ferns, bromeliads, philodendrons and orchids.

Ixalotriton niger is an arboreal species that was first described in 1989. It is an elusive species and scrambles around on the trunks of trees and is capable of jumping in a lizard-like manner when disturbed. It readily autotomizes its tail to escape predators and can also produce a noxious sticky secretion from glands. There is no aquatic larval stage and the young develop directly inside the egg.