World's smallest snake discovered The world's smallest snake, averaging just 10cm (4 inches) and as thin as a spaghetti noodle, has been discovered on the Caribbean island of Barbados. The snake, found beneath a rock in a tiny fragment of threatened forest, is thought to be at the very limit of how small a snake can evolve to be. Females produce only a single, massive egg - and the young hatch at half of their adult body weight. This new discovery is described in the journal of Zootaxa. The snake - named Leptotyphlops carlae - is the smallest of the 3,100 known snake species and was uncovered by Dr Blair Hedges, a biologist from Penn State University, US. "I was thrilled when I turned over that rock and found it," Dr Hedges told BBC News. "After finding the first one, we turned hundreds of other stones to find another one." In total, Dr Hedges and his herpetologist wife found only two females. Defining species Dr Hedges thinks that the snake eats termites and is endemic to this one Caribbean island. He said that, in fact, three very old specimens of this species were already in collections - one in London's Natural History Museum and two in a museum in Martinique. However, these specimens had been misidentified. Dr Hedges explained the difficulty in defining a new species when the organism is so small. "Differences in small animals are much more subtle and so are frequently over-looked," he said. Modern genetic fingerprinting is often the only way to tell species apart. "The great thing is that DNA is as different between two small snakes as it is between two large snakes, allowing us to see the differences that we can't see by eye," explained Dr Hedges. Researchers believe that the snake - a type of thread snake - is so rare that it has survived un-noticed until now. But with 95% of the island of Barbados now treeless, and the few fragments of forest seriously threatened, this new species of snake might become extinct only months after it was discovered. Smallest of the small In contrast to other species of snake - some of which can lay up to 100 eggs in a single clutch - the world's smallest snake only produces a single egg. "This is unusual for snakes but seems to be a feature of small animals," Dr Hedges told BBC News. By having a single egg at a time, the snake's young are one-half the length of the adult. That would be like humans giving birth to a 60-pound (27kg) baby Dr Hedges added that the snake's size might limit the size of its clutch. "If a tiny snake were to have more than one offspring, each egg would have to share the same space occupied by the one egg and so the two hatchlings would be half the normal size." The hatchlings might then be too small to find anything small enough to eat. This has led the researchers to believe that the Barbadian snake is as small as a snake can evolve to be. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7537932.stm
That snake is truly amazing! I would love to see it eat something, I imagine it to be quite entertaining.
Frankly only a biologist researcher would be thrilled , I would have taught that it is a worm and just throw it away. But he should consider himself lucky that what he found was the world's smallest snake and not the largest, or maybe we would be readying any news about him anymore.....
I guess you hunt a snake like that with a gun like this: I used to, as a hobby, sell miniature berloque pistols and revolvers, until after 9-11, when I decided I didn't want to ship them anymore due to laws making shipping certain materials a crime. The are real working guns, but they shoot pinfire blanks instead of bullets. The ones I have also had a flare attachment that would shoot a flare hundred feet into the air. They are pretty cool. I still have a ton of the guns, blanks, and flares. My entire inventory fits in a couple shoe boxes.
I probably would have thought that ЄxDeus™'s girlfriend had just gotten really, really mad at him.
We also have such snakes in our Country Nepal, it's called Spoon Snake and it's only two inches long and it's head is like a spoon and it's highly venemous too.
Hahahahah wisdomtool you are right . When i saw the picture i thought it is a earth worm which comes out in rainy season .
I must comment that I don't believe you. , or rather, that I don't believe you have found some unknown species of snake. You probably think you did.