Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/535

Rh that the females had acquired this brighter coloring, as a secondary sexual character, for the attraction of the males.

The hellbender has the reputation of being an exceeding voracious animal, and in his native stream this is probably true, though in captivity his appetite is very moderate. The contents of the stomach of a number of individuals were examined, and it was found that the most common article of food was apparently crayfish, though earthworms, small fish and, in one case, the mandibles and a foot of a small mammal, probably a mouse, were found. Fish as much as 8 cm. in length were sometimes found in the stomachs of large individuals. As it seemed impossible to catch the hellbenders until comparatively late in the spring, it is probable that they lie dormant through the winter, and hence do not take any food until they renew their activity at the appearance of warm weather.

A number of animals that I obtained one morning in a fish-trap seemed very much distended, as with eggs; on being put into a tub of water they disgorged a great mass of material consisting chiefly of a number of small fish that had been caught in the same trap and had thus fallen easy prey to the appetite of the hellbenders. It almost always happened that when hellbenders were put into an ordinary vessel of water they disgorged, within a few hours, the contents of their stomachs, while if put into a tank of running water they seldom, if ever, disgorged.

Although it seems certain that they catch and eat living fish and crayfish, under natural conditions, they never ate these animals alive in captivity nor, as far as I could see, ever attempted to catch them when they were put into the tank and left there for days. The fact, however, that the crayfish were frequently found on top of a floating piece of board that was in the tank would seem to indicate either that the hellbenders had attempted to catch them or that they had an instinctive fear of the salamanders, founded on racial experience. A couple of small hellbenders were kept for a short time in a glass aquarium jar for close study. These two individuals were the only ones that were actually seen in the act of taking food. If earthworms were lowered into the water just in front of them, they would seize them by a quick, lateral jerk of the head and then swallow them by a series of quick forward jerks, the tongue being, apparently, of very little use in drawing food into the mouth. The quickness of this seizing motion was quite surprising in so sluggish an animal, and showed how a fish or crayfish that ventured within reach might easily be captured. From the beginning of their captivity the hellbenders were fed on raw liver, chopped into pieces as large as the end of a man's thumb. During the first few weeks they ate very little and were fed about once a week, but