Siren (family Sirenidae)

AmphibianSalamanderAquatic

Overview

Sirens (family Sirenidae) are eel-like, fully aquatic salamanders of the southeastern United States (and nearby Mexico), instantly distinguished from other salamanders by two features: they have only a pair of small front legs — no hind limbs at all — and they keep bushy, feathery external gills throughout their lives. Long and slippery, with a finned tail, sirens look more like an eel with frilly gills and tiny arms than a typical salamander.

Sirens are also remarkable for what they reveal about discovery: in 2018, the reticulated siren (Siren reticulata), shown here — a giant nicknamed the “leopard eel” that can reach around 60 cm or more — was formally described as new to science, despite living in the United States, a reminder that big animals can still go unnamed.

Note: “siren” covers a few species; details here describe the family broadly (using the reticulated siren as a reference). Treat general statements as approximate and verify against authoritative sources.

Habitat & Range

Sirens live in the wetlands of the southeastern United States — swamps, marshes, ponds, ditches, and slow, weedy waters — favouring shallow, vegetated, often muddy habitats. Highly aquatic, they spend their lives in the water and burrow into the bottom mud, and they can survive dry periods by retreating into the mud.

Diet

Sirens are omnivores with a broad diet — invertebrates such as worms, insects, crustaceans, and snails, plus small fish and amphibians, and (unusually for salamanders) a fair amount of plant and algal material. They forage at night along the bottom and among vegetation, using suction and their jaws to take prey.

Behavior

Sirens swim with eel-like undulations, their single pair of front legs little used for walking, and they keep their feathery external gills for breathing in the water, supplemented by gulping air with lungs. They are mostly nocturnal and secretive. A striking ability is surviving drought: when their wetland dries up, sirens can burrow into the mud and form a protective, dried-mucus cocoon, becoming dormant (a kind of aestivation) until the rains return — they can endure surprisingly long dry spells this way. Sirens are also among the few amphibians known to make faint clicking or yelping sounds. They lay eggs in the water among vegetation.

Human Interaction & Conservation

Sirens are harmless, little-known wetland amphibians, sometimes caught by anglers and mistaken for eels, and they are of growing scientific interest — the recent discovery of the giant reticulated siren highlighted how much remains unknown even about large animals. They depend on healthy wetlands and can be affected by drainage, pollution, and habitat loss; some species are reasonably common while range-restricted ones warrant attention. Consult AmphibiaWeb and the IUCN Red List for species-specific status.

More photos of the siren