life cycle salamander | Frogs Are Green

The other day my husband asked if I wanted to go see hellbenders at a state park in Pennsylvania. I knew that hellbenders were salamanders, but I didn’t know much else about them. So I thought I’d learn something about them before we go in search of these unique creatures.

Eastern Hellbenders (Cryptobranchus allegoniensis), the only member of the giant salamander family found in North America, are large aquatic salamanders that can grow from 10 to 20 inches in length. They have wrinkled skin and their color varies from spotted yellowish to red and brown.

The Eastern Hellbender lives in fast-flowing, cold streams with rocky bottoms from southern New York to northern Georgia, but are most abundant in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. They are primarily nocturnal and spend most of their day hiding under logs or rocks. They like to eat snails and crayfish and are partial to worms, which sometimes leads to encounters with fishermen.

There are two common misconceptions surrounding this aquatic salamander—that it’s poisonous and that it spreads a slime on fishing lines that drives away fish. Both are untrue. The hellbender is harmless. But these misconceptions have led to nicknames such as devil dog and Allegheny alligator.*

Hellbenders have an interesting reproductive process. They mate late in the summer and the male then digs a shallow nest in the stream bottom beneath a log or rock. A female deposits 100 to 200 eggs in the nest as the male releases sperm to fertilize them. Dad then guards the nest for two to three months until the young hatch.

Hellbenders are considered a living fossil. They haven’t changed much since the Jurassic times, over 160 million years ago, which means they’ve been on Earth about 60 million years longer than humans. But human activity is causing them to decline dramatically in most areas.

Some causes for their decline include blocking of the animals’ migration routes, destruction of their aquatic habitat by dams and other development, as well as pollution, disease, and over harvesting for commercial and scientific purposes.

Here’s a National Geographic video about the hellbender. I wouldn’t try this at home (licking a salamander), but it does remind one that tasting really really bad is one of the defenses of animals like hellbenders.

Unike the hellbender in the video above, the hellbender in this video has been left undisturbed and despite its name, I think the hellbender is quite beautiful when you see it in its natural habitat:

*Most of the information in this post came from Longstreet Highroad Guide to the Pennsylvania Mountains by Greg and Karen Czarnecki.

This past weekend, I went hiking with my family in Harriman State Park in New York. We’ve had a very wet spring—well, actually it sometimes seems as if we’ve been living in a rainforest. It’s possible that all this rain will means lots of frogs and toads this summer.

While hiking we found a swamp and listened to a wonderful chorus of spring peepers and (we think) Eastern American toads.

My son Jeremy listening to a chorus of spring peers, Surebridge Swamp, Harriman State Park, New York

My son Jeremy listening to a chorus of spring peepers, Surebridge Swamp, Harriman State Park, New York

We also saw lots of vernal pools, bodies of water that appear in the spring and last from two to three months before they dry up in the summer. Some types of amphibians, crustaceans, and other wildlife need these pools for breeding, hatching eggs, or as a nursery while they are young. Because they are temporary, vernal pools do not contain fish (which eat tadpoles and larvae).

When you hike by vernal pools, they don’t look like much. In fact, my sneakers got soaked as I tried to jump over one. Yet they are of critical importance to wildlife. I’ve noticed, however, a lot of comments on environmental blogs that read something like this, “Only treehuggers would want to save these mud puddles!” Yet wood frogs, some species of salamander, and fairy shrimp need these “mud puddles” in order to survive. Every year hundreds of acres of wetlands are lost (usually forever) to commercial or residential development. According to the Ohio Vernal Pool Partnership

These usually small, but very dynamic wetlands fill with water, blossom with life and host a cacophony of sounds and a plethora of life forms every spring, only to disappear into the forest floor every autumn…. A vernal pool is a place where a good naturalist can weave many fascinating stories about the amazing life forms, adaptations, and life histories of its inhabitants, and demonstrate it by a single swoop of a dip net! Vernal pool is a miniature, fascinatingly complex and fragile world, with all of its drama played out every year close to our homes, and yet most of us have never witnessed it. [Ohio Vernal Pool Partnership].

: Salamanders and woodfrogs migrate from their wintering sites to vernal pools for breeding when the conditions are right, courtesy of The Vernal Pool Association