Hellbender

(Cryptobranchus alleganiensis)

Hellbenders are the largest salamanders found in North America. They are indigenous to swift-moving, oxygenated streams and important environmental indicators to water health. There are two hellbenders that reside in the E.C.O. Center at the Zoo.

Animal Facts

Hellbenders are nocturnal, meaning they hunt at night, and spend their daylight hours hidden beneath rocks and logs at the bottoms of streams.

Hellbenders are New York State’s largest aquatic salamander.

Hellbenders have lived 29 years in captivity and analysis suggests they can live up to 30 years in the wild.

Can swim but they prefer to walk along the bottom of riverbeds

They do have lungs but they “breathe” through their skin, and the wrinkly skin along their sides gives more area for breathing.

Diet

Hellbenders feed primarily on crayfish, but they also may eat fish, frogs and a variety of invertebrates. They do eat smaller hellbenders.

Status in The Wild

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List status

The eastern hellbender’s range once extended from southwestern and south central New York, west to southern Illinois, and south to extreme northeastern Mississippi and the northern parts of Alabama and Georgia.

Today, healthy populations of hellbenders are limited to a relatively few stream systems in areas that have remained isolated from development and urbanization, mainly in the rugged mountains of West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.

This species is probably in significant decline (but probably at a rate of less than 30% over three generations, assuming a generation length to be approximately ten years) because of widespread habitat loss through much of its range, thus making the species close to qualifying for Vulnerable.