HABITS OF THE GIANT SALAMANDER. 529 



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 cap- 

 tivity 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, how- 

 ever, 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 draw- 

 ing 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 



VOL. LXII. 34. 



