About Caleb Brandt
Caleb Brandt writes The Faunalist’s snake, frog and salamander coverage. Much of it starts with a sighting: a snake on the porch, a call from the pond at night, a small striped salamander under a log, and the question of what it is and whether it is dangerous. He works from state wildlife agency field guides, USGS and museum range data and university extension publications, treats venomous identification as a safety question first, and says plainly when a popular field mark does not hold up. Caleb Brandt is a pen name used by a member of the Faunalist editorial team. He is not a herpetologist and does not claim to be one.
What Caleb covers
- Snakes
- Venomous snake identification
- Frogs and toads
- Salamanders
- Amphibians
- Pet snakes
- North American reptiles and amphibians
Browse every article by Caleb Brandt.
How these guides are researched
Snake and amphibian guides are built from state wildlife agency field guides, USGS and museum herpetology range data and university extension material. Venomous species identification is treated as a safety question: field marks come from official state resources, unreliable marks are called unreliable, and no article suggests handling a snake to identify it.
Identification, range and safety claims are checked against at least two independent sources before publishing, and where the sources disagree the article says so instead of picking the tidier answer. The full process, including which institutions we treat as authoritative for each subject area, is on our editorial standards page.
A note on the byline
Caleb Brandt is a pen name used by a member of The Faunalist editorial team, and the portrait above is an illustration rather than a photograph. The person behind the name writes this subject area and nothing else. We do not claim degrees, licences or field credentials that our writers do not hold, and anything that needs a professional is sent to one inside the article. Our reasoning for working this way is set out on the editorial standards page.
Corrections and contact
Found something wrong in one of these guides, or have a question about a source? Write to [email protected] with the article name and what you found. Corrections are checked against our sources and made in the article itself.