ID a british lizard/newt (1 Viewer)

I once found some kind of lizard or newt at school.
It was about the length of my little finger, and was green.
Now when I say green, I mean green! - unlike the common frog that is more brownish.

It wasn't scaly, and it had a straight tail, unlike a newt.
Would anyone know what on earth that was?
I let it into the lake, and it just crawled to the bottom.
Either it knew how to swim, or it just drowned like a woodlouse in water.

3 British newts

vinnielo said:

I once found some kind of lizard or newt at school.
It was about the length of my little finger, and was green.
Now when I say green, I mean green! - unlike the common frog that is more brownish.

It wasn't scaly, and it had a straight tail, unlike a newt.
Would anyone know what on earth that was?
I let it into the lake, and it just crawled to the bottom.
Either it knew how to swim, or it just drowned like a woodlouse in water.

Click to expand...

Dear Vinnielo
There are only 3 British species of newt. The smallest of these is the Palmate Newt (Triturus helveticus) which grows up to 9 cm long, and can be a kind of olive green colour. It also has a 'straight' tail in both sexes (in the other 2 spp - Smooth and Warty Newt - the male has a crested tail during the breeding season, which is not now, of course!!). The Smooth Newt, with which non-breeding Palmate Newts could be confused, is generally not as likely to be olive-coloured. It also tends to be a larger animal.
There are no green-coloured lizards in the Uk, and they certainly wouldn't swim to the bottom of a pond on release even if there were!! Plus, lizards are noticeably scaly.
But even so, without seeing it, you know......but Palmate seems the best bet.
Yours
David

http://www.whose-tadpole.net/key-to-adult-amphibia/T-helveticus.htm
COULD look about right.

What's the flappy thing on its tail, what's that called?
The "thing" I saw didn't have that.

I've also seen the common lizard page at www.onewildworld.co.uk/reptiles, and it does look similar.

I'd say what I saw was more green, and the skin was smooth rather than scaly.
It must've been only around 6 centimetres long. Maybe it was a baby lizard before it got round to growing scales??

lizards dont swim under water in the uk.

vinnielo said:

I've also seen the common lizard page at www.onewildworld.co.uk/reptiles, and it does look similar.

I'd say what I saw was more green, and the skin was smooth rather than scaly.
It must've been only around 6 centimetres long. Maybe it was a baby lizard before it got round to growing scales??

Click to expand...

Hi,
It' the "green" part of your description that is confusing me. The only lizard or newt in the U.K. that can look particularly green is the sand lizard, although come to think of it the colour variation in common lizards is great and I have seen greenish ones. But I do think that any lizard dropped into water would immediately try to swim to dry land. Juvenile common lizards are very dark in colour and still scaly although the scales are smaller so made not be immediately obvious. A newt on the other hand would swim down into the water or just slowly float down. Palmate newt has been suggested and can be a bit greenish but not very. There are a couple of illustrations of palmate newts on www.darkwave.org.uk~caleb/trihel.html
or try www.geocities.com/jeroenspeybroeck/herplist1.html
and click on Triturus helveticus
Hope that helps
Keith