Hellbenders can grow up to two feet or more. The hellbender is generally nocturnal, spending most of the day under rocks on the riverbed, emerging at night to hunt. It can be found slowly crawling across the bottoms of clear, silt-free mountain streams from southern New York to northern Alabama. A separate subspecies, the Ozark hellbender, is confined to a small part of southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas. information credit: The Nature Conservancy
Hellbender Salamander Names:
1. Devil Dog
2. Snot Otter
3. Mountain Alligator
4. Mud Cats
Facts About the Hellbender Salamander:
1. Mostly eat crayfish & insects
2. Flat head allows them to hide under rocks
3. Rooter-like tails help them swim through the water
4. Hellbenders are nocturnal
5. Hellbenders never come out of the water
6. They are considered amphibians
7. They are the largest North American Salamander
8. They are the third largest species of salamanders in the world
9. They can live to be 30 or more years in the wild & 50 in captivity
10. Although they have lungs, they breathe through pores in their skin
11. Males will create & guard the nests
12. Males will also eat the eggs
13. They are not poisonous, they do have sharp teeth
14. They have an amazing sense smell
15. Fossil records date Hellbenders to more than 160 million years
16. They can swallow fish almost as long as themselves
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