CAECILIANS

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The Caecilian

Caecilians can be as long as a 9-year-old girl!  WOW!  Caecilians have no legs or tails.  Caecilians look like worms on the outside, but they have jaws and teeth.  They can be anywhere from 7 inches to 4 ½ feet long; most are about 1 foot long.  Their bodies have grooves; some species have small scales in the skin.  Most amphibians have scales.  There is a groove on both sides of the head.  The eyes of a caecilian hardly ever move, some species don’t have any eyes at all.  

Caecilians live in swampy areas in the tropical areas of the world, but caecilians are rarely ever seen because they like to burrow under ground.  Caecilians like to eat small invertebrates.  A few caecilians look like eels as adults.  There are 50 species of caecilians in about 16 genera.  Caecilians are classified into the Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Amphibia, order Apoda, and family Caecilidae.