Andrias sligoi

It is possible that Andrias sligoi may be the largest extant amphibian today, a superlative generally attributed to Andrias davidianus. The largest known Andrias specimen was a 1.8 m (5.9 ft) individual captured near Guiyang in Guizhou Province in the early 1920s. Although historical specimens collected near Guizhou do not have enough usable DNA to identify the species they belong to, more recent specimens collected from the region cluster with A. sligoi, meaning that the largest collected individual may have been an A. sligoi, rather than A. davidianus or a related species. When describing the species, Edward Boulenger referenced notable morphological differences between "M." sligoi and "Megalobatrachus maximus " (A. davidianus), which were later also used to support its revival as a distinct species. However, living captive individuals discovered in Japan in 2024 were found to very closely resemble A. davidianus and Andrias jiangxiensis despite genetically matching with A. sligoi, indicating that Boulenger's morphological diagnosis may have been inaccurate. At the time, "Megalobatrachus maximus" referred to both the Chinese and Japanese giant salamanders, so it is possible that Boulenger may have compared A. sligoi with an individual of A. japonicus to find these morphological differences, as opposed to A. davidianus.