The Animals Of Missouri

Section 01

Where The Ozarks Meet The Prairie

Missouri sits at a crossroads. The Ozark Plateau covers the southern half, an ancient unglaciated dome of limestone and dolomite riddled with caves and springs. North of the Missouri River the land is glaciated till plain, historically prairie and oak savanna, now farmland. The southeast corner is the Mississippi Lowlands, a flat alluvial extension of the Delta, and the far west grades into true prairie.

The Ozarks are the biological heart. Missouri is called the Cave State with more than 7,500 documented caves, and its springs are extraordinary: Big Spring and Greer Spring each discharge hundreds of millions of gallons a day, among the largest single-outlet springs in the world. That water comes through soluble rock, which means it moves fast and filters poorly, and it supports animals found nowhere else. Missouri has cave-adapted fish, crayfish, isopods, and salamanders, several restricted to single cave systems.

Missouri's rivers are equally distinctive. The Current, Jacks Fork, and Eleven Point are spring-fed, clear, and cool even in summer, and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways was the first national park unit established to protect a river system. Those streams hold the Ozark hellbender, one of the most endangered amphibians in North America.

The state's most visible recovery is elk. Extirpated by the 1860s, elk were reintroduced from Kentucky stock beginning in 2011 into the Peck Ranch area of the southeastern Ozarks, and the herd now numbers a few hundred animals with a limited hunt established.

Section 02

Missouri's Official State Animals

The Missouri mule, named state animal in 1995, is a domestic animal honoured for economic history: Missouri was a major mule-breeding state supplying farms and armies through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Naming the crayfish as state invertebrate is a nod to real biology, since Missouri has an exceptional crayfish fauna with several species endemic to single Ozark watersheds.

Section 03

Habitats By Region, And Who Lives In Each

1. Ozark Plateau and the Courtois Hills

Oak-hickory and shortleaf pine forest over limestone and dolomite, with sinkholes, caves, glades, and clear spring-fed streams. This is the richest part of the state: black bear recovering from near-extirpation, elk reintroduced, bobcat, timber rattlesnake, eastern collared lizard on glades, and cave species including grotto salamander and Ozark cavefish. See Ozark Mountains.

2. Ozark glades

Open, rocky, desert-like openings on south-facing dolomite slopes, maintained historically by fire and now by management. They hold a distinctly western fauna stranded far east: eastern collared lizard, Great Plains skink, painted bunting, roadrunner at the northeastern edge of its range, and tarantulas.

3. Northern glaciated plains

Rolling till plain, historically tallgrass prairie and oak savanna, now mostly row crop and pasture. Wildlife persists in wetland restorations and conservation reserve grassland: white-tailed deer, coyote, badger, and grassland birds including Henslow's sparrow and dickcissel. Missouri's remaining greater prairie-chickens hold on at a few managed sites in the west and have been supplemented with birds from Kansas and Nebraska.

4. Osage Plains and western prairie

The state's best remaining tallgrass prairie, including Prairie State Park where a bison herd grazes. Also regal fritillary butterfly, prairie mole cricket, massasauga in wet prairie, and upland sandpiper. Related: state parks where bison still roam.

5. Mississippi Lowlands, the Bootheel

Flat alluvial land in the southeast, largely drained and farmed, with remnant cypress and tupelo swamp at Big Oak Tree and Mingo. Species reaching their northern limit here include cottonmouth, swamp rabbit, bird-voiced treefrog, and alligator snapping turtle.

6. Big rivers

The Missouri and Mississippi rivers, both heavily engineered for navigation. They hold pallid sturgeon, paddlefish, blue catfish, and a mussel fauna much reduced by channelisation. Bald eagles winter along both in large numbers below the locks and dams.

Section 04

The Cave State: Springs, Caves, And Hellbenders

Missouri has more than 7,500 documented caves, and its karst is the reason the state's most imperiled animals are aquatic and subterranean.

• Cave fish and invertebrates: the Ozark cavefish is blind and pigmentless, living in cave streams in southwest Missouri and adjacent states. Several cave crayfish, isopods, and amphipods are restricted to single cave systems, meaning a species can be lost by contaminating one recharge area.
• Grotto salamander: a striking case of cave adaptation. Larvae live in surface streams with functional eyes and normal pigment, then on maturing into cave-dwelling adults they lose pigment and their eyelids fuse over degenerate eyes.
• Bats: Missouri caves hold major hibernacula for the endangered gray bat and Indiana bat. Gray bats are unusual in using caves year-round rather than only in winter, which makes them dependent on a small number of specific caves. White-nose syndrome has hit other species hard. See do bats hibernate.
• Ozark hellbender: a fully aquatic salamander reaching two feet, breathing through folds of skin and requiring cold, clean, fast water with large flat rocks. Missouri populations declined by roughly 75 percent or more, and the subspecies is federally endangered. The Saint Louis Zoo achieved the first captive breeding of Ozark hellbenders in 2011, and thousands of captive-reared young have since been released.

Section 05

Mammals Of Missouri

• White-tailed deer: reduced to perhaps 400 animals by 1925 and restocked, now roughly 1.4 million.
• Elk: extirpated by the 1860s, reintroduced from Kentucky stock beginning in 2011 in the southeastern Ozarks, now a few hundred animals with a limited hunt. Related: where to watch the elk rut.
• Black bear: nearly gone by the 1950s, recovering both from remnant animals and from Arkansas restocking spilling north. Missouri now estimates over a thousand bears and opened a limited season in 2021.
• Bobcat, coyote, red and gray fox, badger, river otter, mink, long-tailed weasel, striped and spotted skunk, raccoon, opossum, beaver, muskrat, armadillo, swamp rabbit, eastern cottontail: all present. River otters were reduced to perhaps 70 animals and reintroduced from Louisiana in the 1980s, recovering so completely that they became a nuisance complaint issue, one of the most emphatic recoveries in the Midwest.
• Bats: 16 species, several federally listed, and Missouri's caves are nationally significant hibernacula.
• Mountain lion: no breeding population, but Missouri has confirmed dozens of individual cougars since 1994, almost all young males dispersing from the Black Hills and Nebraska.

Gone: bison, wolf, and red wolf, all extirpated in the 19th century. Bison persist only as conservation herds at Prairie State Park and elsewhere.

Section 06

Birds Of Missouri

Around 440 species have been recorded. Missouri sits on the Mississippi Flyway and its varied habitats mix eastern, western, and southern species.

• Waterfowl and waterbirds: Squaw Creek, now Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge, hosts spectacular snow goose concentrations that can exceed a million birds at peak, along with large bald eagle numbers drawn to the flocks. Trumpeter swans, restored regionally, now winter in the state in growing numbers.
• Grassland birds: greater prairie-chicken survives only at a few managed sites with translocated birds, and Henslow's sparrow, dickcissel, upland sandpiper, and bobwhite quail all depend on remaining grassland. Bobwhite is the state game bird and has declined steeply across its range.
• Glade and southwestern species: painted bunting, greater roadrunner, and Bell's vireo reach Missouri's western and Ozark glade country.
• Forest birds: cerulean warbler, worm-eating warbler, Kentucky warbler, Acadian flycatcher, and Louisiana waterthrush in the Ozark forests, which hold some of the largest unbroken blocks in the Midwest.
• Others: eastern bluebird (the state bird), whose recovery was helped enormously by volunteer nest box trails, plus bald eagle restored to hundreds of nesting pairs and sandhill cranes passing on migration.

Section 07

Reptiles, Amphibians, And Fish

Missouri has around 75 reptile and amphibian species combined in unusually high diversity for its latitude, helped by the Ozarks and the Bootheel.

Snakes: about 47 species, five venomous: copperhead, cottonmouth in the southeast, timber rattlesnake, western pygmy rattlesnake, and eastern massasauga, which is state endangered and nearly gone. Missouri also has the eastern collared lizard, restored to Ozark glades by translocation after fire suppression eliminated it from many sites.

Turtles: three-toed box turtle (the state reptile), ornate box turtle in prairie, alligator snapping turtle, plus map, musk, painted, and softshell turtles. Missouri's Bootheel holds the northernmost populations of several southern species.

Amphibians: Ozark hellbender and eastern hellbender, both imperiled, plus grotto salamander, Oklahoma salamander, ringed salamander, four-toed salamander, and around 25 frog and toad species including crawfish frog and Illinois chorus frog. The American bullfrog is the state amphibian.

Fish: roughly 200 species. Pallid sturgeon in the Missouri and Mississippi is federally endangered, harmed by channelisation that removed the shifting sandbars and side channels it needs. Paddlefish is the state aquatic animal, and Missouri's Ozark streams hold an exceptional darter and minnow fauna plus the Niangua darter, found only in a few Osage basin tributaries.

Section 08

Dangerous Animals In Missouri

• White-tailed deer: the most dangerous animal in the state, causing many thousands of vehicle collisions annually.
• Venomous snakes: five species. Copperheads cause most bites and are rarely fatal. Timber rattlesnakes are widespread in the Ozarks but seldom seen.
• Brown recluse spider: Missouri is close to the centre of this species' range and it is very common in homes and outbuildings, along with black widows.
• Ticks: Missouri consistently reports among the highest tick-borne disease rates in the country, including Rocky Mountain spotted fever, ehrlichiosis, tularemia, Heartland virus, and alpha-gal syndrome from lone star ticks.
• Black bear: no fatal attacks in Missouri. Food conditioning in the Ozarks is the practical issue as the population grows.
• Feral hogs: aggressive when cornered, and the target of an aggressive state eradication effort.
• Caves and water: cave accidents and river drownings, especially on Ozark float streams, injure far more people than Missouri wildlife.

Section 09

Endangered And Protected Species

Missouri's pressures fall on water and grassland. Karst contamination and sedimentation threaten cave and stream species, gravel disturbance and nutrient runoff affect hellbenders and mussels, channelisation of the Missouri River eliminated pallid sturgeon spawning habitat, and near-total prairie conversion left grassland birds with fragments. Set against that, Missouri's Conservation Department is funded by a dedicated sales tax approved by voters in 1976, which gives it unusually stable long-term funding and is often cited as a model for state wildlife agencies.

Section 10

Where To See Wildlife In Missouri

• Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge: snow geese in the hundreds of thousands to over a million, plus dozens of bald eagles, in late November and again in February.
• Peck Ranch Conservation Area: the state elk herd, with a viewing drive open seasonally, best during the September and October rut.
• Ozark National Scenic Riverways: spring-fed rivers, hellbender habitat, and caves.
• Mingo National Wildlife Refuge and Big Oak Tree State Park: Bootheel cypress swamp with southern species.
• Prairie State Park: bison, prairie-chickens, and the state's best tallgrass remnant.
• Ha Ha Tonka and Ozark glades: collared lizards, tarantulas, and glade specialists.
• Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary: confluence-area waterfowl, pelicans, and trumpeter swans.