Though ferocious-looking, they can be captured with almost ludicrous 
ease. A hook baited with a worm or frog serves to start them on their way 
to oriental cook-pots and medicine chests. Giant salamanders have large, 
depressed heads and squat bodies; their skins are spotted black-and-brown. 
Fleshy membranes border their bodies and their short limbs. The finned 
tails are rounded at the tip. 
A much smaller counterpart of the giant salamander is the “hell¬ 
bender, of the Mississippi and its tributaries. Though it is not nearly as 
vicious as its name would indicate, this eighteen-inch variety is a fighter 
and unbelievably hardy. Dr. Stejneger states that after soaking a hell-bender 
in alcohol for twenty-four hours to preserve it, he was amazed to find it 
not only alive but rather active. In appearance and life habits it is very 
much like its larger Asiatic relative. 
AMERICAN 
SALAMANDERS 
Virtually all salamanders, regardless of their mode of life, lay their eggs 
in water. The larvae have three pairs of gills at each side of the neck; in 
some salamanders these gills disappear at later stages, and in others they 
remain through life. One species, in fact, may under certain conditions 
never leave its larval form. This is the axolotl, long considered an unclassi¬ 
fied aquatic species, found in the deep lakes near Mexico City. They are 
now known to be the larvae of the tiger salamander, an American species 
so named because of its blotchy-yellow stripes on a brown or black body. 
Perhaps because of the dryness of the surrounding country axolotls 
never leave their lake abode, but retain their larval form, in which they 
often attain a length of one foot. They reproduce, however, in much the 
same manner as fully developed salamanders, so that one never knows if 
an axolotl is the offspring of another axolotl or a tiger salamander. By 
experimentation, naturalists have discovered that the axolotl can be forced 
to breathe through its lungs by gradually reducing its water supply. The 
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