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Anton Sorokin
@antonsrkn

23,631 followers

If you're viewing this on a cellphone take my word for it that it looks better viewed large. Won't be a popular image here on IG but I like it, so I'll share. A hellbender in the foreground with another one sneaking up behind it, eventually they converged and the back one bit the tail of the front one. The entire process probably took ~15 min to play out from the moment I swam up on them which allowed me to try a few different angles at the scene of which this was my favorite. It's not that hellbenders are slow, more so that they're not in a particular hurry to move across the bottom of the stream. They'll crawl across the bottom relatively rapidly for minutes at a time before stopping in a spot they like and hanging out from anywhere between a few moments to over an hour. The hellbender in front had been hanging out in this spot since the moment I arrived, and the 2nd was slowly crawling up behind it - the pursuing bender seemed aware of the others' presence even before it could have seen it and made its way directly over to it and wasted no time biting the tail of the complacent snot otter. Startled, the 1st bender shot up into the water column and swam away. I saw quite a number of brief interactions/bites like this and it never got old, an exciting moment each time. . . . #freshwatersnorkeling #freshwaterlife #underwaterworld #animalsdoingthings #animalbehavior #underwaterphotographer #underwaterlife #aquaticlife #uwphotography #uwpics #amphibiansofinstagram #hellbender #cryptobranchus #amphibianconservation #amphibian #salamandersofinstagram #salamander #caudata #nikonnature #nikonwildlife #nikonnofilter #nikonunderwater #herpetologia #herping #herpsofig @nauticamhousings