Description: A long, (3.5 to 5.0 inches in length) slate gray to bluish-black salamander with no distinguishing colors or markings. The belly is gray to black.

Habitat: Its natural habitat is temperate forests. It is found under moss, rocks, logs, and bark in cool, moist forests above 2500 feet. Especially found in spruce-fir forests.

Range: It is endemic to the Blue Ridge Mountains and Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States.

Found in these States: NC | TN | VA

Diet: The Gray-cheeked Salamander commonly eats millipedes, earthworms, crane flies, spiders, and centipedes and less commonly eats ants, mites, and springtails. They eat spiders, moths, flies, beetles, bees, and snails.

Reproduction: The male and female perform a courtship, where the male nudges the female with his snout, does a foot dance, then circles under the female and the two then walk together. Like other salamanders, they do not migrate or aggregate during breeding season. Nests of grey-cheeked salamanders have never been found. It is likely that they lay their eggs in underground cavities during late spring or early summer. Females of most closely-related species will guard their eggs until hatching and it is thought that grey-cheeked salamander females probably do the same. Grey-cheeked salamander hatchlings do not go through an aquatic larval stage. Instead, when young salamanders emerge from their eggs they look like miniature adults.

Status: Listed as Least Concern since, although its extent of occurrence (EOO) is only 19,273 km2, it is common and considered to be reasonably adaptable with a presumed large population.

Taxonomy: