Nature Bulletin No. 757   May 23, 1964
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Seymour Simon, President
David H. Thompson, Senior Naturalist

****:WATERDOGS, HELLBENDERS, SIRENS
AND CONGO EELS

Occasionally a perch fisherman on Chicago's lake front lets out a 
startled gasp as he pulls in an ugly, squirming creature that looks like 
something out of a bad dream. It is a foot-long, chunky animal with a 
flat head, small eyes, a collar of red, bushy gills, four weak legs and a 
broad tail. The skin -- sickly gray with dark blotches -- is disgustingly 
slimy.

The Waterdog or Mud Puppy is the most numerous of four species of 
large salamanders that live in the streams and lakes of the Middle 
West. Unlike our smaller salamanders which change into an adult 
form that lives on land, these four remain in a juvenile stage and 
spend their entire lives in water. As a rule they are active only at night 
and so secretive in their habits that they are seldom seen except when 
one swallows a baited hook. Contrary to popular superstitions they are 
entirely harmless to man. Skinned and fried they are said to have the 
flavor of frog legs.

In late spring pairs of waterdogs perform a courtship dance and the 
female sticks about 100 quarter-inch, yellow eggs on the underside of a 
rock or sunken log. The female guards the nest until the inch-long 
young hatch some two months later. They grow slowly, finally 
becoming sexually mature at 7 or 8 years. They have been known to 
live 23 years in captivity. The diet is mainly crayfish, aquatic insects, 
worms and fish.

In school and college laboratories generations of zoology students have 
dissected preserved waterdogs in their anatomy classes. They are 
particularly well suited for the study of the circulatory system after the 
arteries have been injected with red and the veins with blue latex. The 
General Biological Supply House of Chicago prepares and markets 
about 10,000 of them each year under its scientific name, Necturus.

The Hellbender, so natives along the Ohio and Wabash rivers say, is 
"a creature from hell -- bent on returning. " Reaching two feet or more 
in length, it has a stout flattened body, a husky tail, four short thick 
legs and tiny eyes. It is as wrinkled as a dried prune with loose folds of 
skin along the sides. Although it may rise to the surface to gulp air 
into its lungs, it absorbs most of its oxygen through the skin. In 
September the female lays strings of eggs in a nest scooped in the 
gravel behind a rock in a fairly fast stream. Here they are guarded and 
fanned by the male until they hatch in November.

The Giant Salamander of the mountain streams in Japan and China is 
a near relative of our hellbender. The world's largest living amphibian, 
it reaches a length of five feet and a weight of 100 pounds. It is known 
to have survived 55 years in captivity. Now it is raised commercially in 
Japan as a table delicacy.

The Congo Eel that lives in pools and quiet waters of our southern 
states is a freak among the salamanders. With a cylindrical, 
serpentine, muscular body up to thirty inches in length it resembles an 
eel or a snake but is neither. The oddity about this animal is the 
ridiculous size of its legs. They are so tiny and weak that they are of no 
possible use either in walking or swimming. One has to look sharp to 
see them.

The Siren is another large, eel-like salamander. However, it has useful 
front legs but no hind legs at all. Like the waterdog it keeps its 
external gills throughout life. Its favorite habitat is a pond or slough in 
a river floodplain such as those of downstate Illinois. In early spring 
the female lays eggs in hollows in the mud bottom; When the ponds 
dry up, they bury themselves in the muck or retreat into crayfish holes 
and wait for rain.