Greater Sirens (Siren lacertina) are long eel-like aquatic salamanders, with large external gills.
They are found in bodies of freshwater with muddy substrata in the SE United States, from Ea. VA south through the state of Florida. Sirens are carnivorous, eating a wide variety of small aquatic vertebrates and larger aquatic invertebrates. They have only a pair of small front legs (no back legs), and may grow to a length of up to ~38 in (96.5 cm).
Though they do not possess teeth, they may deliver a painful and bloody bite with the sharp bone ridges in their mouths. They are also capable of vocalizing, emitting clicks and faint barks. Sirens are capable of becoming dormant underground for long periods, in cocoons made of mucous secreted from the skin, during times of drought (up to 1 year in good conditions).
Hellbenders are normally solitary animals with a fixed home range.
Once a hellbender has established a den, it will rarely leave it except to hunt or to find a mate. The territories of two animals may overlap, but the two hellbenders are never found in the same place at the same time; should they meet by chance, they will challenge each other. A larger animal will chase a smaller one away, but two equally matched hellbenders will engage in a vicious fight (see bottom image). And should one hellbender kill the other, they are not above cannibalism.
Strap on your birthday hats and break out the cake and candles,
because a new ‘dragon’ just hatched inside Postojna Cave in southwestern
Slovenia!
No, they’re not real dragons (we wish fire-breathing dragons were
real just as much as you do) - they’re actually a species of blind,
aquatic salamander called olms, which are nicknamed dragons because of their long, slender bodies.
But even if they aren’t the dragons from your favourite lore,
these hatchlings are a huge deal, because olms only lay eggs once or
twice a decade, despite their 100-year lifespans.
Oedipina petiole is a species of worm salamander (Caudata, Plethodontidae), newly described in 2011 from the central portion of the Cordillera Nombre de Dios, Honduras.
Plethodontid worm salamanders of the genus Oedipina are among the most challenging neotropical salamanders to study, due to their secretive fossorial habits and the resulting infrequency with which they are encountered.
This high yellow individual is rather atypical for this subspecies. However, in this particular population, this morph represents a small fraction of the animals (an extremely rough estimate is 1 in every 50–100 animals). Belgium.
