The Eastern Hellbender is a mysterious creature. It has a scary name, slimy texture, lives a solitary life under rocks in remote Appalachian Mountain streams, and is mostly nocturnal. Yet it’s also increasingly threatened and important to maintaining stream health.
On this episode of Earthly, Jonathan talks to Clemson associate professor Cathy Jachowski.
Jachowski studies stream ecology, and she’s going to tell us everything we ever wanted to know about the eastern hellbender — including the origin of its horror-movie name — which is just another one of its many mysteries.
