Weird, Wonderful Wildlife #5 – The Penis Snake

(c) Fazared, via Imagur

Well if there’s ever a subject that could get me censored, it would be this one. Say hello to the penis snake, the legless amphibian that can grow up to five feet long and that does indeed resemble the male anatomy, though I’m grateful to say I’ve never encountered a five foot version of its human namesake (lol). These creatures are a type of caecillian names Typhlonectes natans, which is native to Columbia and Venezuela and are a unique order of amphibian totally unrelated to the newts, frogs, toads and salamanders that make up the rest of the class; the first one found in Florida in 2019 was about two feet long and lived in a canal by the Miami airport. Several others have been found since then, and even though nobody knows for certain how they ended up in the wild in southern Florida, its believed they were probably kept as pets and released when they got to be too big to care for. So far, they are no threat to anything other than my 12 year old boy sense of humor – their preferred habitat is warm, slow moving fresh water and they hunt small animals in must the same way snakes do. They will also probably eventually be prey for larger snakes and birds. Despite their unfortunate name, they really are interesting, don’t you think?

Source: http://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/the-penis-snake-is-floridas-latest-invasive-species-29720951

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