Eastern newt

Newt iii
Originally uploaded by Unaka

Notophthalmus viridescens (Salimandridae)

This is the eft stage.

Etymology from Wikipedia: The oldest form of the name is eft, which is still used for newly metamorphosed juveniles, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary it changed for unknown reasons first to euft and then to ewt. For some time it remained as an ewt, but the "n" from the indefinite article an shifted to form a newt.

Some newt trivia (from Wikipedia):

- "As pissed as a newt" is a popular British expression to describe someone who is very drunk, a reference to the side-to-side gait of a newt on land.
- "Eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog" was part of the incantation of the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth
- The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone is often lampooned for his interest in keeping and breeding newts and has become known as "King-Newt" to some of his political rivals.
- In 1936, Czech science-fiction writer Karel Čapek wrote an internationally-acclaimed novel called War With the Newts about the discovery of a species of intelligent newts in an island close to Indonesia.