ALABAMA (WHNT) — Alabama is home to quite a few animals with strange names, but none may be more misleading than the hellbender.

What exactly is a hellbender?

According to the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR), the Eastern hellbender is a “large, totally aquatic salamander.” Sometimes they are known by less threatening names like mudpuppy, water dogs, and the Allegheny Alligator.

ADCNR describes the creature as having a flat head, long tail, and four short legs with with rough toes to move along the bottom of streams. They begin life with gills, but wildlife experts say they shed those at 18 months old.

While there isn’t a confirmed story on how the creatures got the “hellbender” moniker, PBS NewsHour says “one theory is that fishermen named them hellbenders because they look ‘like they crawled out of Hell and are bent on going back.'”

In this June 18, 2014 photo, Rod Williams, a Purdue University associate professor of herpetology, holds a hellbender that he and a team of students collected in southern Indiana’s Blue River near Corycon, Ind., during a survey of populations of the rare amphibian. Hellbenders, an aquatic animal that’s North America’s largest salamander, are endangered in Indiana and four other states and face habitat loss and other pressures in the 11 other mostly Eastern states where they live in swift-flowing, rocky rivers and streams. (AP Photo/Rick Callahan)
In this June 18, 2014, photo, an adult hellbender, measuring 21 inches in length, rests in a measuring device on near Corydon, Ind., along southern Indiana’s Blue River after being caught by a Purdue University team surveying the river for the rare amphibians. The big salamander was later released by the Purdue team back into the river. Hellbenders, North America’s largest salamander, are endangered in Indiana and four other states and face habitat pressure in most of the 11 other states where they’re found. (AP Photo/Rick Callahan)
In this June 18, 2014, photo, Rod Williams, a Purdue University associate professor of herpetology, holds a hellbender that he and a team of students collected in southern Indiana’s Blue River near Corydon, Ind., during a survey of populations of the rare amphibian. Hellbenders, an aquatic animal that’s North America’s largest salamander, are endangered in Indiana and four other states and face habitat loss and other pressures in the 11 other mostly Eastern states where they live in swift-flowing, rocky rivers and streams. (AP Photo/Rick Callahan)

Hellbenders can be found from Southern New York to north Georgia and Alabama, and westward toward Illinois and Kentucky. However, these populations are listed as “rare and possibly endangered.”

ADCNR says hellbenders are “now confined to a few free-flowing Tennessee River tributaries.” They are listed as a highest conservation concern.

Learn more about hellbenders and other Alabama animals here.