Content tagged with "Reptiles and Amphibians"

Many people know Missouri as “the cave state,” and the grotto salamander is Missouri’s only species of blind salamander. A true troglobite, it lives in total darkness and has small eyes that are completely or partially covered by their pink or beige skin.

With its stout body and thick forearms, this rare frog may at first appear more like a toad. It lives in open, sandy areas that were formerly sand prairie grasslands and wetlands of southeastern Missouri.

Little brown skinks are Missouri's smallest species of lizard, and they are brown! These ground-dwellers also have dark brown or black stripes and speckling along their sides. When walking along a forest trail, hikers may hear the sound of small lizards scurrying through dead leaves, but they seldom see them.

This shy, reclusive, nonaggressive rattlesnake used to live in floodplain wetlands of the Mississippi, Missouri and Grand rivers, but as those wetlands have been drained and destroyed, the massasauga has disappeared with them. Now it is an endangered species.