What is a hellbender?

Nobody knows for sure how this lazy fellow got his name. In modern times, he grows to be about two feet long, but his ancient ancestors were much larger. Several hundred years ago, the fossil bones of one of his ancestors who lived 30 million years ago were unearthed. The scientists of those days knew less than they do today and the old fossil was mistaken for a human victim of Noah’s flood.

You are likely to catch a hellbender in any fresh water stream from Ohio to New York and southward to Louisiana. Fishermen often catch him by mistake and quickly throw him back into the water, for he is far from attractive in appearance. In fact, the hellbender is just about as ugly as an animal has a right to be.

He is classed with the amphibians and somewhat resembles his smaller cousins the newts and salamanders. He may be two feet long, covered with muddy blotches of greyish brown and his loose skin hangs in flabby folds, His wrinkled body seems to have been stepped upon and his wide, broad tail seems to have been sqeezed flat between two rocks. His little round eyes are placed where you would expect his nostrils to be and he has no eyelids.

In the matter of diet, the hellbender competes with his close cousin the mud puppy. Both these water dwelling amphibians dine on worms, small fish, snails and water beetles, The lazy hellbender spends most of his time on the muddy floor of a stream, often partly hidden by a rocky shelf, just waiting for dinner to come near enough to be grabbed.

Sometimes, though not often, the hellbender leaves the water at night and ventures onto the land. He must wait to make these foraging trips, however, until he is a year and a half old.

At this age, he swaps his youthful gills for a pair of lungs. As an adult, he can breathe air on the land and, while in the water, he can absorb dissolved oxygen through his skin.

The breeding season begins in August when Mr. Hellbender digs a shallow nest in the muddy floor of a stream. The eggs, maybe 300 of them, look like long strings of glassy beads and both parents stay nearby to guard them. It may be two months before the youngsters hatch no into tadpoles, each/more than one inch long. If all goes well, the baby hellbenders will become adults in about two years.

Perhaps the most important feature of the hellbender is his flabby skin. It is an amphibian’s skin, like that of the frog and the salamander. Tiny blood vessels near the surface take in dissolved oxygen from the water. The wrinkles and folds of his skin are a great help for they expose a larger skin surface to the water and the hellbender is constantly weaving and waving his wrinkles to keep water flowing over his skin.