Amphiuma

Two toe Aalmolch ( Amphiuma Means )

The Congo Eels ( Amphiumidae ), also called fish newts, are live exclusively in water, sometimes up to a meter long, primitive salamanders coastal marshes and ponds in the south and southeastern United States.

Features

Congo Eels have an elongated, cylindrical ( eel-like ) body, a pointed head with lidless eyes and reduced, just a few millimeters long limbs with two or three toes and part of a finger. These can be about 2-3 cm tall with large specimens of 1 m length. After their number three types described their ways of life are absolutely equal. The spine consists of 63 amphicoel, so both sides inside hollowed and cartilaginous intervertebral discs, shaped vertebrae, of which only the front ribs. They have lungs with a very long trachea, but also four gill arches, each with one gill hole on both sides of the head. Congo Eels, the largest red blood cells within the vertebrates.

Depending on a total length of 30 to 115 cm is achieved. The largest specimens can be up to 1.25 kilograms.

Dissemination

Congo Eels are found in warmer, more peaceful and weedy waters of the south-east, situated near the Gulf of Mexico coastal plains of the United States as well as in the Mississippi valley north to the Missouri River. Their range overlaps with that of the Sirens.

The fossil species amphiuma norica was found in Germany and to date from the Pleistocene.

Way of life

The animals are nocturnal; during the day they stay hidden among water plants and other shelters in the waters, they visit again and again. At night they come out and look at the bottom for water insects, worms, small fish, snakes, frogs, molluscs and crustaceans. Even smaller conspecifics are chased. In rainy weather and flood they occasionally leave the living waters and move kriechenderweise on wet meadows around. They are very snappy and are often thought of as toxic by the population incorrectly.

They are partially eaten and to catch them in shallow water with string networks or simply by hand and rough, hard and high gloves.

Reproduction

The mating season from January to May recruit more females to win the favor of a male. Finally, wrap the partners, and the male transfers - unlike the other tailed amphibians - the spermatophore directly into the cloaca of the female. The female rolls later ashore to lay several hundred eggs in two cords in damp places and this " nest " to " incubate " about 5 months or guard. The gills and limbs hatching, four to six inches long larvae are eventually flushed by rainfall or rising water levels in the water. 4 months later, in early spring, is the transformation of a larva in the external gills disappear and the lungs take up its function. However, four gill arches and gill holes remain. This is between the 3rd and 4th branchial arch. So your development involves an incomplete metamorphosis (partial neoteny ) as opposed to the axolotl or other newt larvae.

Taxonomy

• Genus Congo Eels, Amphiuma Garden in Smith, 1821 Kind of two -toed Aalmolch, Amphiuma Means Garden in Smith, 1821
• Art pulled in. - Aalmolch, Amphiuma pholeter Neill, 1964
• Type three-toed Aalmolch, Amphiuma tridactylum Cuvier, 1827

See also: systematics of amphibians, with references for the common taxonomy of amphibians. Further information about a completely new, phylogenetically -based classification model.