What Do Newts Eat? - Kylon Powell
Emily Cortez 
Eating Habits Of Newts
Newts are a subfamily of salamanders and are quite versatile in their habitat. Newts usually live on land, but they can also stay underwater temporarily or permanently. Given the variety of their habitats, their dietary habits differ from each other too. For instance, the newts living on land can eat animals like worms, insects, and slugs. On the other hand, the newts living in water can eat crustaceans, tadpoles, insects, water snails, and shrimps. In this post, we’ll delve deep to find the answer to the question, “What do Newts eat?” So you can better understand their food preferences!
Insects, Animals, Plants
As their species live on both land and in water, one can expect newts to have a large variety in their diet. Moreover, they fulfill this expectation perfectly. Hence, newts eat animals. For starters, newts often eat their eggs, larvae, and even their young ones. Newts can also eat tadpoles, fish and smaller fish, and fish food. Their diet habits contain an extensive list of edible foods that they enjoy.
That being said, newts can eat snails, frogs, frogspawn, frogspawn and tadpoles, baby frogs, baby fish, and big tadpoles. And their diet list doesn’t end there. Newts also eat newt tadpoles, baby goldfish, baby newts, daphnia, frog eggs, snail eggs, their eggs, frog tadpoles, fish eggs. They love to enjoy their fish-eating habits, hence you’d see newts eating toad tadpoles, slugs, and snails.
Besides, newts also eat goldfish, leeches, minnows, pond snails, pond fish, ramshorn snails, slugs, shrimp, small fish, toad spawn. Because they prefer an aquatic diet, newts can eat water fleas, water beetles, and water boatman. As you can see, the eggs of many species are the prime target for newts as they can access them easily. Similarly, the newts eat young of other species and water boatmen as well. Since newts live on the land too, you’d find their favorite foods in this category, too. A large number of insects on land can become the prey of newts anytime. Newts eat crickets, worms, land snails, mosquito larvae, ants, bloodworms, baby frogs, beetles, dragonfly, dragonfly larvae. In addition to these, newts can also eat earthworms, snail eggs, flies, mealworms, spiders, sticklebacks, ticks, and woodlice.
What Newts Do not Eat?
While they have a varying diet, newts don’t eat things that they do not prefer. This has to do with their dietary nature as well as their size. Newts are carnivores so their only source of food is meat, throwing every kind of plant and fruit out of the picture. Hence, newts don’t eat plants, fruit, duckweed, blanket weed, grass, lettuce, mushrooms, pond plants, strawberries, and vegetables. In addition to plants, there are many animals that newts do not or can’t eat.
That said, Newts don’t eat snakes, larger frogs, chicken, and turtles no matter how accessible they are. The reason why turtles aren’t included in their diet is that they can harm newts. For that reason, they wouldn’t prefer to consume them. Similarly, newts also don’t eat snakes for obvious reasons.
