The bigger the better?

Did you know that there were such a thing as Giant salamanders? I certainley did not. I mean, I haven't really thought about salamanders that much during my 26 years here, apart from a summer when I was 9 and a friend collected small little slimey ones in a wetland close to my hometown. So I've assumed that salamanders are small, perhaps with some variation up to Gecko-lizard sizes but not huuuge.

So therefore I was extremely facinated, and somewhat horrified in a way that H.P. Lovecraft would explain as "unexplainable", when I surfed upon this image:

It's enormous! Not just big but enormous! And there's actually a few variants; one species in China one in Japan, and one in the US. The Chinese salamander can reach 1.8 metres. That's just 8 cm longer than I am. Creepy (yeah, I know - Protagoras "Homo mensura" definitley holds when we tag animals as "huge", "ugly" and so on but I believe that no non-humans will ever read this blog and therefore I take the liberty to call other beings whatever adjective that I want!). They all have poor vision and mainly hunts during the night, when they go for fish, molluscs, worms and other yummy things. I thought that I would find some statement that they are friendly creatures with no known conflicts with humans but they can actually bite and inflict quite a bit of pain. If this is a rare event or if it's something that can happen whenever you swim in their territories it doesn't say. However, I will definitely not dip my toes in their waters...

Of course, all things large enough to threaten the community of Homo sapiens are in a risk of being pushed away. Sadly, this is also the case for the Giant salamanders. I bet that in 100 years or less, we will be the only creature (except for domesticated animals) that are allowed to be more than 1.4 meters long. Just wait and see.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbender
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_salamander
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_giant_salamander
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_giant_salamander