00:01Hi everybody, I'm Amanda and I'm Brian and we're here at the St. Louis Zoo to
00:06talk to you about how we raise hellbenders. I'm going to talk to you
00:09about how we raise the hellbenders from eggs to adults. I'm going to talk to you
00:12about how we create the aquarium systems that we use to raise the hellbenders.
00:16Now let's go get started.
00:26So here at the St. Louis Zoo we're raising Ozark hellbenders
00:30because they're a federally listed endangered species and we're raising
00:33them up from eggs all the way until we are able to release them back into the
00:37wild. Ozark hellbenders are found in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas.
00:43Hellbenders are a type of salamander which is an amphibian and that means that
00:47they live very close or in the water.
00:53Hellbenders can get up to about two feet long and they kind of have a flat body.
00:58Their head is very flat because it allows them to get underneath these rocks that
01:01they live in on the bottom of the stream and they're really kind of unique too
01:05because they have a very long kind of rudder-like tail. It's kind of flat which
01:09helps them swim through the water.
01:18We actually have captive bred eggs and then we also have some that are collected from
01:22the wild. And we put them into our egg tray systems and we take care of them in those
01:27egg trays until they hatch. And then once they hatch out we put them into critter keepers
01:31inside of larger tanks. And it takes them another six to eight weeks before they actually start
01:36eating. And once they start eating it's a lot of work for the keepers because we go through
01:40with little pipettes, little eyedroppers, and put the food in front of all the hellbenders
01:45so we make sure that they're all growing. As they get older they get out of those critter
01:48keepers and go into the larger tanks. And we still continue to feed them. We feed them
01:53different food items as they get older.
01:59When the animals first start eating they're eating little tiny foods because they're very
02:04tiny animals. So they get things like brine shrimp and then as they get older they start getting
02:08a lot more live food items. So we'll feed them ghost shrimp. Sometimes we get crayfish for
02:13them. We feed them fish and then also krill and a lot of other different frozen food items
02:23for them. So here at the St. Louis Zoo we have over 4,000 hellbenders. And we go through
02:29and we weigh and measure all of them at least every six months. And the way that we can track
02:34the animals is that they actually have a chip just like they put in cats and dogs. And we
02:39can scan that chip and we know which animal it is. So now that we've learned how we raise
02:43hellbenders let's take it over to Brian and learn how we take care of over 4,000 of them
02:47here at the St. Louis Zoo.
02:49Thanks Amanda. We're down here at the Ron Gellner Center for Hellbender Conservation where we
02:54have over 250 different individual hellbender aquariums. Just like your aquarium at home
03:00we measure everything from water quality to temperature and oxygen in our exhibits here.
03:05For our hellbenders we have several different types of systems for different sizes of hellbenders
03:10from eggs to juveniles all the way to adults. And you can see indoors we actually have a
03:16man-made stream where hellbenders lay their eggs. So this is a really cool feature on our
03:28indoor stream system. It's called a biofilter and it helps oxygenate the water as well as
03:33help promote healthy bacteria in the system.
03:44It may look like a construction site in here but hellbenders love to hide. So we give them
03:49PVC pipes and tiles to help mimic their natural behavior in the wild. So I love my job and I
03:56love
03:56taking care of hellbenders because I know that if it weren't for us working with them they'd
04:02probably be gone within the next 20 years or so. And knowing that I am helping to save them
04:09and to save the species makes my job completely worthwhile and it makes me love it even more.
04:15Thank you very much.
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