Green Anaconda

Type: Reptile
Diet: Carnivore
Size: 20 to 30 ft (6 to 9 m)
Weight: Up to 550 lbs (227 kg)
Group name: Bed or knot
Average lifespan in the wild: 10 years


Member of the boa family, South America’s green anaconda is, pound for pound, the largest snake in the world. Its cousin, the reticulated python, can reach slightly greater lengths, but the enormous girth of the anaconda makes it almost twice as heavy.

Green anacondas can grow to more than 29 feet (8.8 meters), weigh more than 550 pounds (227 kilograms), and measure more than 12 inches (30 centimeters) in diameter. Females are significantly larger than males. Other anaconda species, all from South America and all smaller than the green anaconda, are the yellow, dark-spotted, and Bolivian varieties.

Anacondas live in swamps, marshes, and slow-moving streams, mainly in the tropical rain forests of the Amazon and Orinoco basins. They are cumbersome on land, but stealthy and sleek in the water. Their eyes and nasal openings are on top of their heads, allowing them to lay in wait for prey while remaining nearly completely submerged.

They reach their monumental size on a diet of wild pigs, deer, birds, turtles, capybara, caimans, and even jaguars. Anacondas are nonvenomous constrictors, coiling their muscular bodies around captured prey and squeezing until the animal asphyxiates. Jaws attached by stretchy ligaments allow them to swallow their prey whole, no matter the size, and they can go weeks or months without food after a big meal.

Female anacondas retain their eggs and give birth to two to three dozen live young. Baby snakes are about 2 feet (0.6 meters) long when they are born and are almost immediately able to swim and hunt. Their lifespan in the wild is about ten years.

Spotted Salamander

Type: Amphibian
Size: 7 in (18 cm)
Diet: Carnivore
Average lifespan in the wild: Up to 20 years


Despite being fairly large and having an extremely broad range, the spotted salamander is actually pretty hard to, well, spot.

They can reach 9 inches (23 centimeters) in length and are prevalent in mature deciduous forests from eastern Canada throughout the eastern and midwestern United States. But these secretive salamanders spend almost their entire lives hidden under rocks or logs or in the burrows of other forest animals.

They will populate upland forests and mountainous regions, but are most common in moist, low-lying forests near floodplains.

They emerge from their subterranean hiding spots only at night to feed and during spring mating. They will actually travel long distances over land after a heavy rain to mate and lay their eggs in vernal pools and ponds.

Visually striking, these stout salamanders are bluish-black with two irregular rows of yellow or orange spots extending from head to tail. Like many other salamanders, they secrete a noxious, milky toxin from glands on their backs and tails to dissuade predators. Their diet includes insects, worms, slugs, spiders, and millipedes.

Spotted salamanders' numbers are generally stable throughout their range, but they are very sensitive to changes in their ecology, and rising water acidity in certain habitats is negatively affecting their population. The pet trade and habitat loss also take a toll

Eastern Coral Snake

Type: Reptile
Size: 20 to 30 in (51 to 76 cm)
Diet: Carnivore
Average lifespan in captivity: Up to 7 years

A bite from the notoriously venomous eastern coral snake at first seems anticlimactic. There is little or no pain or swelling at the site of the bite, and other symptoms can be delayed for 12 hours. However, if untreated by antivenin, the neurotoxin begins to disrupt the connections between the brain and the muscles, causing slurred speech, double vision, and muscular paralysis, eventually ending in respiratory or cardiac failure.

This iconic snake, with its bulbous head and red, yellow, and black bands, is famous as much for its potent venom as for the many rhymes—"Red and yellow, kill a fellow; red and black, friend of Jack"—penned to distinguish it from similarly patterned, nonvenomous copycats, such as the scarlet king snake.

Coral snakes are extremely reclusive and generally bite humans only when handled or stepped on. They must literally chew on their victim to inject their venom fully, so most bites to humans don't result in death. In fact, no deaths from coral snake bites have been reported in the U.S. since an antivenin was released in 1967.

Eastern coral snakes are relatives of the cobra, mamba, and sea snake. They live in the wooded, sandy, and marshy areas of the southeastern United States, and spend most of their lives burrowed underground or in leaf piles.

They eat lizards, frogs, and smaller snakes, including other coral snakes. Baby snakes emerge from their eggs 7 inches (17.8 centimetes) long and fully venomous. Adults reach about 2 feet (0.6 meters) in length. Average lifespan in the wild is unknown, but they can live up to seven years in captivity.