We as humans are struggling to attain the best, smoothest skin. If you look into the skincare industry right now, you will realize that millions of products that all promise to promote smooth skin are being produced daily.

However, what if we told you that some animals have naturally smooth skin? It’s okay to be jealous. We were too.

Examples of animals with smooth skin include blue poison dart frogs, fire salamanders, axolotls, arboreal thoriuses, and others. However, beauty isn’t the only quality this feature offers. For many animals, smooth and soft skin serves as a biological weapon to escape predators and survive in the wild.

So, how many animals have smooth skin? And how soft is the outer layer of each of these animals? These are questions this blog post is here to answer.

Read along as we share our list of animals with smooth skin!

List of Animals With Smooth Skin

• The Blue Poison Dart Frogs
• Spanish Ribbed Newts
• Tomato Frogs
• Iranian Harlequin Newts
• Golden Poison Frogs
• Fire Salamanders
• Red-eyed Tree Frogs
• Sierra Juarez Hidden Salamanders
• Arboreal Thorius
• Axolotls

The Blue Poison Dart Frogs

Scientific Name: Dendrobates tinctorius azureus
Type of Animal: Amphibian

The blue poison dart frog is one of the more recent frog species scientists have discovered and perhaps one of the most interesting in a long time. When you look at the animal, the first thing that catches your attention is its blue-ish skin.

As you may have expected, the blue poison dart frog is a rare species that researchers have found only in some isolated areas of forests in Northern Brazil and Suriname.

The blue poison dart frog has extremely smooth skin, which it uses to swim better and escape predators. It also has smooth skin because it spends all of its time in the water.

Whatever you do, don’t touch its skin! Its skin is loaded with poison that helps to kill small predators or severely paralyze bigger predators.

It is also very active during the day, making this particular frog diurnal. If you want to see some of them in the Brazilian or Suriname forest, you should check around the forest’s streams.

These unique frog species love to live in mosses and under rocks.

Spanish Ribbed Newts

Scientific Name: Pleurodeles waltl
Type of Animal: Amphibian

Amphibian keepers are in love with Newts. If you head over to an amphibian zoo, you would most likely find out that newts are the main attraction.

Although newts are pretty small, the Spanish ribbed newt is relatively big, and it has a stout figure and is about 12 inches in length.

They have a grayish-brown color that shows some hues of green and yellow. Sometimes, because of a newt’s genes, these hues could be black.

The skin of Spanish ribbed newts is freakishly smooth, although I’d advise you not to touch it. Like many amphibians, the Spanish ribbed newts are covered in poison. This amphibian’s poison can paralyze or kill most predators.

In addition to swimming, these newts also use their skin to protect themselves.

If they feel like they’re in danger, they’d quickly and easily contract their bodies and force their ribs towards the skin of their backs. However, this defense tactic wouldn’t have been possible if they’d had tough skin.

Read Also: List of Short-Legged Animals

Tomato Frogs

Scientific Name: Dyscophus
Type of Animal: Amphibian

Madagascar is one of the most amazing places for wildlife and plants to thrive. It is constantly exposed to rainfall, which means its air is almost always pleasantly humid.

It has such an exotic climate and hosts equally exotic wildlife that the country itself has become one of the biggest tourist attractions worldwide. One of the exotic creatures it houses is the Tomato Frog.

Despite the color of its skin and its pleasantly docile personality, people are especially attracted to its smooth skin.

Tomato frogs use their smooth skin to complement their personality further as they burrow underground, looking to escape predators and get as much water as they can. Their smooth skin also allows them to absorb water a lot smoother than amphibians with rougher skin.

These frogs also make great pets, especially for newcomers who don’t know how to take care of amphibians well enough.

Fire Salamanders

Scientific Name: Salamandra salamandra
Type of Animal: Amphibian

This is a strikingly beautiful salamander with an even more beautiful story behind its name. The name “fire salamander” stuck because people used to believe that this salamander was born out of fire itself.

This type of salamander is so popular that it is known as the most common salamander in all of Europe. You can commonly find them under logs of wood in tropical areas.

Not only is it known for its poisonous liquid spray, but fire salamander is also known for its unique, moist and smooth skin. These fire salamanders come in various warm colors, warning predators that it’s dangerous. 

Red-eyed Tree Frogs

Scientific Name: Agalychnis callidryas
Type of Animal: Amphibian

This red-eyed tree frog is one of the most impressive frogs in the world, as it can last for up to five years on its own in the wild.

One of the most noticeable features of this astonishing creature is its finely-structured skin. It’s incredibly smooth to the touch, making its skin one of the softest on earth. Red-eyed frogs’ smooth skin and webbed feet allow them to stick to the bottoms of leaves easily.

But a feature that’s even more striking is their red, bulging eyes. A lot of wildlife experts and scientists speculate that they developed this eye color and structure as a warning sign to their predators.

If startled or disturbed, they immediately expose their webbed feet and flash their bulging eyes as a defense mechanism. Some attack, while many use this startle technique as an opportunity to run.

Arboreal Thorius

Scientific Name: Thorius arboreus
Type of Animal: Amphibian

The Arboreal Thorius is similar to the Sierra Juarez hidden salamander in some ways. For one, they are an endangered species.

They are also only found in highly humid and cloudy forests and are threatened by increased agricultural practices in these areas.

The first thing you’d notice about them is their relatively big pair of eyes, followed closely by their smooth skin. Also, their limbs are rather long when compared to many other salamanders.

By living in trees, arboreal thoriuses make great use of their moist and soft skin to survive in their habitat.

If you want to see any of them, you’d have to travel deep into the woods. You’d better hope they don’t all get startled the minute you approach them.

Axolotls

Scientific Name: Ambystoma mexicanum
Type of Animal: Amphibian

The Axolotl is one of science’s most beloved discoveries. This extraordinary creature has very distinctive features, and they are commonly found in the canals of Mexico City.

Unfortunately, these animals are becoming increasingly endangered every day. It is so severe that you can’t find most of them in their natural habitats anymore. Instead, you’d find that many of them are bred and stay in captivity all their lives. 

One of the reasons axolotls are kept domestically is their flawlessly smooth and moist skin. Mostly pale, their skin hardly has any creases or bumps. In fact, many scientists consider these animals to have the smoothest skin in the world.

What’s even sadder is that many Japanese restaurants now serve them as food. Less ethical scientists use these animals as test subjects in an attempt to find out the secret behind their cancer-killing immune systems and their smooth skin.

Golden Poison Frogs

Scientific Name: Phyllobates terribilis
Type of Animal: Amphibian

Although this frog’s looks and skin are beautiful to touch, don’t be fooled. Many wildlife experts consider this frog to be one of the most poisonous globally. In fact, National Geographic has stated that there is enough poison in its skin to kill ten grown men.

Commonly found in Colombia, the Embria people have used this poison for centuries to add some sting to their ammunition(Get it?)

Among the various poison dart frogs, this is one of the largest as it averagely measures roughly 2 inches in length. Despite their name, these frogs are either pale green, yellow, or orange.

The skin coloring of golden poison frogs depends on their genes and the type of predator they constantly try to escape. This concept of varying coloration to escape predators is known as aposematic coloration.

Sierra Juarez Hidden Salamanders

Scientific Name: Cryptotriton adelos
Type of Animal: Amphibian

This type of salamander is extremely rare, as it is only found in undisturbed cloud forests 2000m above sea level.

As you may expect, the Sierra Juarez hidden salamander could become endangered in a few years due to increasing human settlements, expanding agriculture, etc.

Aside from their snout-vent length and long tails, one of the most noticeable features of hidden salamanders is smooth skin. Their soft and smooth skin is mostly caused by their habitat conditions.

These amphibians also have cream-colored stripes located near the animal’s upper surface. You can find them beside leaf litter and very near epiphytic plants.

Iranian Harlequin Newts

Scientific Name: Neurergus kaiseri
Type of Animal: Amphibian

The last member on our list of animals with smooth skin is the Iranian Harlequin Newt.

They are salamanders that are mainly found in, you guessed it, Iran, and like many types of newts, they spend most of their time on land all year round. If you check Iranian streams and pools of water that dried up not too long ago, you would most likely see them there in droves.

During the months of summer, when the temperature gets hotter, they hide in burrows to protect themselves from the heat.

The highly smooth skin of harlequin newts allows them to slip in and out of these burrows with ease, and they enter a state of estivation during this period. Without this biological feature they developed, many would die off yearly.

If care is not taken, these delicate creatures would then become extinct. So in many cases, this smooth, shiny skin is a survival tool for them.

The Verdict

There are thousands of amphibians and animals in general that have smooth skin. However, the ten here mentioned above are some of the most noticeable animals with smooth skin humans can only dream of attaining.

Thank you for reading. If you like this kind of post, here’s our recommendation for a similar article: Animals With Big Foreheads