By — Leah Clapman Leah Clapman Leave a comment 0comments Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/12-facts-about-hellbender-salamanders Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter 12 Facts About Hellbender Salamanders Science Aug 7, 2013 2:18 PM EDT List compiled by Rebecca Jacobson. Read our full Science Wednesday report. They have lungs, but they breathe completely through pores in their skin. Their name Cryptobranchus means “secret gill.” They are the third largest species of salamanders in the world, growing to over two feet long and weighing over four pounds. Their closest relatives live in China and Japan, but hellbenders are the last of their genus. They can live into their 50s in captivity — that’s ancient for an amphibian. Unlike other salamanders, they can’t regrow their limbs. Biologists “tagged” hellbender salamanders captured in the 1990s by clipping off one of the amphibian’s toes. They are loyal to their rocks. An individual hellbender’s range is less than half a square mile, and the salamanders have been found under the exact same rocks year after year. Males create and guard the nests but they also eat the eggs. Contrary to popular belief, they are not poisonous, but their teeth are still sharp enough to break human skin. They have an amazing sense of smell. Kim Terrell, a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, says a tiny drop of earthworm scent in a 40 gallon tank sends the hellbenders in her lab scrambling out from under their rocks looking for the food. They hunt like eels, lurking under heavy rocks and lunging at crayfish, worms, and small fish. And their gullet is enormous — they can swallow fish almost as long as themselves. No one is sure how they got their name, but one theory is that fishermen named them hellbenders because they look “like they crawled out of hell and are bent on going back.” They are also called “mud cats,” “devil dogs” and “snot otters” — named for the mucus they secrete through their skin when threatened. Fossil records date the existence of hellbender salamanders to more than 160 million years ago. By — Leah Clapman Leah Clapman Leah Clapman is the Managing Editor of Education. In 2009, she created Student Reporting Labs, a video journalism training initiative in over 150 schools and 46 states that translates NewsHour values of excellence, responsibility and trust into an innovative project-based learning program. She founded NewsHour Extra, which provides lesson plans and PBS Learning Media curricula for teachers, and helped launch and manage “Making the Grade,” the NewsHour’s weekly focus on education issues, policy and practice, and “Rethinking College,” the NewsHour’s annual series on change and innovation in higher ed. @lclap
List compiled by Rebecca Jacobson. Read our full Science Wednesday report. They have lungs, but they breathe completely through pores in their skin. Their name Cryptobranchus means “secret gill.” They are the third largest species of salamanders in the world, growing to over two feet long and weighing over four pounds. Their closest relatives live in China and Japan, but hellbenders are the last of their genus. They can live into their 50s in captivity — that’s ancient for an amphibian. Unlike other salamanders, they can’t regrow their limbs. Biologists “tagged” hellbender salamanders captured in the 1990s by clipping off one of the amphibian’s toes. They are loyal to their rocks. An individual hellbender’s range is less than half a square mile, and the salamanders have been found under the exact same rocks year after year. Males create and guard the nests but they also eat the eggs. Contrary to popular belief, they are not poisonous, but their teeth are still sharp enough to break human skin. They have an amazing sense of smell. Kim Terrell, a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, says a tiny drop of earthworm scent in a 40 gallon tank sends the hellbenders in her lab scrambling out from under their rocks looking for the food. They hunt like eels, lurking under heavy rocks and lunging at crayfish, worms, and small fish. And their gullet is enormous — they can swallow fish almost as long as themselves. No one is sure how they got their name, but one theory is that fishermen named them hellbenders because they look “like they crawled out of hell and are bent on going back.” They are also called “mud cats,” “devil dogs” and “snot otters” — named for the mucus they secrete through their skin when threatened. Fossil records date the existence of hellbender salamanders to more than 160 million years ago.