Real Origins of the Salamander: Fireproof or Just Misunderstood?

In this episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), co-host Laura Fawks Lapole dives into the myth of the fireproof salamander. Once believed to be born from fire and capable of extinguishing flames, salamanders were long surrounded by fantastical stories. But where did these legends come from? Laura explores the real-world origins of these myths, from salamanders crawling out of firewood to the confusion with asbestos, known as “salamander’s wool.” Discover how a real amphibian sparked centuries of fiery folklore.

Perfect for mythology lovers, science enthusiasts, and anyone curious about how myths and nature collide.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you need to know about nature and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura, and it's Minnesota time. If this is your first Minnesota, welcome.
But as many of you know, after each of our seasons, we like to take a little bit of a break so that we can recharge and plan for the next season. So in the meantime, we're doing some Minnesota. Kim started us out, and now it's Katie and I turn, and then we'll bring you our new season.
In this Minnesota series, we are talking about the very real origins of mythical creatures, which was suggested to us by one of our listeners. And it's been so fun to research. This is such a Lara topic, talking about mythical creatures and science and tying them together.
So I'm really excited today to briefly talk about the mythical origins of the salamander. Now here's the part where you go, Lara, the salamander's a real animal, but salamanders are also mythical creatures. Not the salamanders that you can find out in the woods under a log, but the salamander that is referenced by Aristotle back in 300 BCE or by Pliny the Elder in 50ish AD.
On that mythical creature, you could see in something like Frozen 2, where the little fire salamander is. That's actually what inspired me to do this episode because I was watching Frozen 2 the other day and saw that cute little salamander and was like, oh, this is the perfect mythical creature to talk about. You already love real salamanders, Laura.
So let's talk about the mythical creature version. So back in the day, people thought that salamanders were creatures of fire. As I mentioned, Aristotle and both Pliny the Elder talked about this in some of their writings.
They thought they were actually born from the fire itself. And not only could they not die in the fire, but they could actually extinguish it with their ice cold bodies. And if you used their body parts right, they could protect you from fire.
Leonardo da Vinci, who I'm sure is a familiar name to everyone listening, was famous for dissecting things and then drawing their internal parts. He claimed to have dissected a salamander and found no digestive organs, and therefore concluded that it must only eat fire. Sounds reasonable, I guess.
But I guess he just wasn't looking hard enough, because I'm here to tell you that they absolutely do have digestive organs. Sorry, Leo. Saint Isidore of Seville in 500ish AD also wrote about how the salamander was extremely, really insanely toxic.
So much so that if it climbed a tree, or a fruit tree in particular, it could poison all of the fruit on the tree. And it was claimed that one salamander destroyed Alexander the Great's entire army after they drank water that had been swimming in. It also was claimed that it could burn human skin and make all of your hair fall out if it touched your body.
Dang! So you can see that this is not the same creature as the salamander that truly exists. This is a mythical creature who was born from fire, eats fire, and is so toxic that you would never want to meet it.
So what's the real scoop on the salamander? Where did that legend come from? Two major factors may play into this.
Mainly, it's that it's the European salamander started this whole thing. The European salamander, aka the fire salamander. It lives and hibernates in logs.
So when fuel was thrown on the fire, the poor little salamanders inside would desperately try and crawl their way out, which made people think that they were just being born from the fire itself. And they are a little bit moist being amphibians, so they wouldn't instantly catch fire, which might make people think that they were fireproof, though it probably wouldn't have actually put out the fire. Those salamanders are red, too, so definitely gives the impression of a creature born from fire.
I gotta say, I can totally see how well you would think this, because when I was younger, I had my own similar experience, not with a salamander, but with a toad. We were at Girl Scout Camp and had just lit a fire, and this poor tiny toad comes crawling out of the fire for dear life, its little tongue hanging and lolling on the ground. So little Laura decides that she's going to save this toad.
So I pick it up, I rinse off its tongue, I roll it back up and put it back in its mouth, and it seems to stop breathing. So then little Laura performs CPR on the toad. And I think that it lived.
At least that's my memory of it, that it lived and it hopped away. So if a toad could come out of the fire, why not a salamander? I knew at the time more about amphibians, probably, than people back in the day.
So I knew it didn't actually come from the fire, but I can see how that could happen and that amphibians do like to hang out in those rotten logs, whether it's because it's the winter and they're hibernating or brumating, or if it's just because that's where they live, because amphibians do need to stay moist, so they like to stay in dark, damp places. Anyway, back to the salamander. The toxicity part is a little bit true, but not nearly to the degree that was believed.
The fire salamander can actually spray poison from a gland behind their eyes, which is totally wicked, up to one foot away, directly into the eyes or mouth of the creature that's trying to eat it. But they're not toxic enough to kill a person. The European salamander isn't the only part of the story, though.
There's also asbestos. Asbestos is a naturally occurring fireproof mineral that was mined and could be then refined and put into woven cloth. In Eastern countries, this material was sometimes referred to as salamander's wool.
And when talk of that was spread around or written down, it was sometimes mistranslated or misheard and taken very literally. So you'll see in some old bestiaries that salamanders are drawn with wool. They felt that they were fuzzy.
And that if this material was harvested, you could make clothing out of it that was fireproof. So the two things just kind of got jumbled together and then added to the mythical creature. Coincidentally and terribly, we now know that asbestos is carcinogenic and can cause cancer.
So it also kind of adds to that toxicity claim of the salamander as well. So there you have it, folks. A perfectly reasonable explanation for this mythical creature.
Totally makes sense that you would think that something crawling out of a fire came from a fire if you didn't know any better at the time, or that if you heard something called salamander's wool, why could there not be an animal like a sheep that had wool like that? I gotta say, I'm a little disappointed because I do love salamanders. I think they're so cute and cool and interesting, but they would just be a little bit cooler if they could eat fire and just be born out of it almost like a phoenix.
But I guess I can settle for the real thing. It just goes to show that inside of every myth and legend is a grain of truth. That's all I have for you today, folks, but keep tuning in.
We have just a couple mini-sodes to go before we dive right into our next season. You aren't gonna want to miss it. We also wanted to say a big, ginormous, heartfelt, really can never be big enough, thank you to Kim, who has been with us since the start of the podcast, being our manager, our motivator, and just keeping Katie and I on track.
But Kim has a new job. She's focusing on other things right now, and so she stepped down from her role. So you haven't heard the last of Kim, I'm sure, but she won't be doing any more of our mini-sodes.
Sad day. But that also means that we're looking for someone else to join the team. So if anyone or multiple people are interested in joining the For the Love of Nature podcast team, we do need people to help with social media or who can do other administrative tasks that Katie and I just don't have the time or bandwidth for.
So if you're interested, please contact us. Join us, Nature nerds. We'd love to have you.
Keep listening, and we will talk to you next week. Bye, everybody.