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Thanks to Kai and Emily for their suggestions this week!\n\nThe greater siren [photo by Kevin Stohlgren, taken from this site]:\n\n\n\nThe anhinga [photo by Tim from Ithaca - Anhinga, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15526948]:\n\n\n\nAn anhinga swimming [photo by Wknight94, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons]:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\nThis week we\u2019re going to learn about two animals, one suggested by Kai and the other suggested by Kai\u2019s mom Emily. It\u2019s so awesome to hear when families like to listen to the podcast together. This episode even includes a mystery animal I bet you\u2019ve never heard of.\nLet\u2019s start with Kai\u2019s suggestion, the greater siren. The greater siren is an amphibian, specifically a salamander, but it\u2019s probably not the kind of salamander you\u2019re thinking of. For one thing, it can grow over three feet long, or about a meter, which is pretty darn big for a salamander. It\u2019s dark green or gray in color with tiny yellow or green speckles, and while it has short front legs, those are the only legs it has or needs. It also has external gills which it keeps throughout its life, unlike most salamanders who lose their external gills when they metamorphose into adults.\nThe greater siren lives primarily in Florida, but it\u2019s also found in coastal wetlands throughout much of the southeastern United States. It\u2019s mostly nocturnal and during the day it hides among water plants or under rocks, and will even burrow into the mud. At night it comes out to find food, which includes crayfish and other crustaceans, insects and spiders, little fish, other amphibians, snails, and even algae. It swallows its food whole, even snails and other mollusks. It poops out the shells and other undigestible pieces.\nThe grater siren\u2019s body is long but thin, sort of like an eel, with a rounded tail that\u2019s slightly flattened to help it swim. While it does spend its whole life in the water, it has small lungs that allow it to breathe air if it needs to. It can wriggle above ground for short distances if it needs to find a new pond or river, and sometimes it will sun itself on shore. In drought conditions when its water dries up, the greater siren will burrow into the mud and secrete mucus that mixes with dead skin cells to form a sort of cocoon. The cocoon covers everything but the siren\u2019s mouth, so it can still breathe. Then it enters a state of torpor called aestivation, and it can stay in its mud cocoon for a long time, possibly as much as five years, and still be fine once the water returns. It does lose a lot of its body fat and its gills wither away, but it regenerates them quickly once it has water, and will gain weight quickly too once it has food.\nIn early spring, the female siren lays her eggs in shallow water. The male fertilizes them and takes care of them for the next two months, when they hatch into little bitty sirens that go off on their own right away.\nThe greater siren has tiny eyes and probably doesn\u2019t see very well. It has a good sense of smell instead, and it can also sense movement and vibrations around it with its lateral line system. This is an organ found in many fish and a lot of larval amphibians, although the greater siren retains it throughout its life. It allows the animal to sense the movement of water in extremely fine detail. The greater siren can probably also sense electrical impulses, which is something that all animals generate when they use their muscles.\nIf there\u2019s a greater siren, you may be thinking, there must be a lesser siren too. There is, and it\u2019s very similar to the greater siren, just not as big. It only grows about two feet long at most, or 61 cm.\nKai mentioned that the greater siren looks a lot like the axolotl, a critically endangered salamander found only in Mexico. I checked to see if the two salamanders were closely related and was actually surprised t...