Smallest Snake Species Discovered

Technocrat

Smallest Snake Species Discovered

zogger

Sun Aug 03 13:29:00 -0700 2008

Biology

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The diminutive crawler, a full sized adult at only 4 inches long and quite thin, was discovered on the island of Barbados. Previous specimens were taken in the past, but not identified as a new 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. ed.z.: man, that's tiny! And being a snake it is a full vertebrate, much intricate stuff in a small package there. Going with modern themes and memes, we should nickname it nanosnake. -~~~~~~o

Smallest Snake Species Discovered

Mathinker

Mon Aug 04 08:06:03 -0700 2008
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A paper describing the two new thread snake species is publicly available from Zootaxa.

The article says the smaller species may go extinct very soon because of deforestation (I guess the lack of forest means a lack of termites for the snakes to eat). I wonder how easy it might be to raise these in captivity? They don't take much room, anyway!

Smallest Snake Species Discovered

StonePiano

Mon Aug 04 18:59:50 -0700 2008
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A guy showed me a snake no larger than this (may have been a juvenile snake) in Nairobi. I would have sworn it was a worm until we looked closely at the head and could just make out the scales and see the forked tongue flashing out to taste the air.

But... what is with the context sensitive ads? I guess the words 'adult' and 'Caribbean' along with a few descriptions of size in the post were enough to spice up the advertisements. I'd like to know if the ads are affected when there are over 18 replies, or references to equal rights for Asian girls...