Hellbender babies at Saint Louis Zoo
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Uploaded by stlzootube on Nov 30, 2011
World's first captive breeding of Ozark hellbenders happened at Saint Louis Zoo in November 2011. Here are the babies!
The Saint Louis Zoo's Ron Goellner Center for Hellbender Conservation and the Missouri Department of Conservation today announced that Ozark hellbenders have been bred in captivity—a first for either of the two subspecies of hellbender. This decade-long collaboration has yielded 63 baby hellbenders.
The first hellbender hatched on Nov. 15, and currently there are approximately 120 additional eggs that should hatch within the next week. The eggs are maintained in climate- and water quality-controlled trays behind the scenes in the Zoo's Herpetarium. For 45 to 60 days after emerging, the tiny larvae will retain their yolk sack for nutrients and move very little as they continue their development. As the larvae continue to grow, they will develop legs and eventually lose their external gills by the time they reach 1.5 to 2 years of age. At sexual maturity, at 5 to 8 years of age, adult lengths can approach two feet. Both parents are wild bred: the male has been at the Zoo for the past two years and the female arrived this past September.
Rivers in south-central Missouri and adjacent Arkansas once supported up to 8,000 Ozark hellbenders. Today, fewer than 600 exist in the world—so few that the amphibian was added in October 2011 to the federal endangered species list.
See more on hellbenders at http://www.stlzoo.org.
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Amazing, congratulations to all the team behind this achievement ;)
ferrubadub 2 months ago
This is why the STL Zoo is one of the best in the nation
JeRM52591 3 months ago
Congrats! Very good news indeed...
Thamnophissirtalis 3 months ago