University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Each year, U-M's Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles course culminates in a field trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where the students spend several days searching for salamanders and other amphibians.

The highlight is the hunt for giant hellbender salamanders, which live under flat rocks in cold, fast-moving streams. Hellbenders, which can grow up to two feet in length, are the largest aquatic salamanders in North America. The annual Smoky Mountains trip provides U-M undergraduates with an opportunity to handle live salamanders that they've previously seen only in textbooks or preserved in museum specimen jars.

Watch the short You Tube video created by the U-M News Service about this year's trip, which took place during spring 2012 and included 10 students. Greg Schneider, collections manager, Museum of Zoology Division of Reptiles and Amphibians, shot the on-site footage in N.C. with the Herpetology Division's iPad. Schneider and Professor Diarmaid Ó Foighil are interviewed in the video. The course is EEB 450.

U-M News Service video