We’ve welcomed an interesting new species…

We’ve welcomed an interesting new species…

While this new species may not be as cute as our recent Grevy’s zebra foal, bongo calf or squirrel monkey babies, they are incredibly unusual!

We now have four Rio Cauca caecilians in the Flooded Forest, in Tropical House. They arrived at Marwell from Chester Zoo in June and have been settling in behind the scenes until now.

Caecilians are actually legless amphibians and they get their name from the Latin for ‘blind’ or ‘hidden’, “caecus”.

Rio Cauca caecilians are particularly special as they are one of only a few caecilian species that are entirely aquatic; most are fossorial, meaning they live underground.