The rarest snake in North America was found… choked to death on a centipede

sarahjay1 (69)memberin Popular STEM • 2 years ago

(Kevin M. Enge et al. / Ecology, 2022 https://bit.ly/3B3iHdQ)

A visitor to a national park on Key Largo Island, off the coast of Florida, discovered a dead specimen of a rim rock crowned snake, one of the rarest North American snakes.

The case was even more rare because, unfortunately for the reptile, a scolopendra protruded from its mouth.

A team of herpetologists led by Kevin M. Enge studied the find with the help of computed tomography and came to the conclusion that the snake died by choking on the centipede.

Snakes are reluctant to show themselves to other animals, including us.

About 800 species of snakes are not captured in any photograph, which seriously complicates their study and protection.

Most of these species live on the islands of the Caribbean Sea, Northeast Africa, Oceania, and in Southeast Asia.

THE RAREST AMERICAN SNAKE
In North America, one of the most secretive snakes is the rim rock crowned snake (Tantilla oolitica) from the colubridae family.

This small and harmless reptile lives only in South Florida and the Florida Keys, where it lives in pine forests growing on oolitic limestones.

Herpetologists suggest that this species is suffering from habitat destruction, so the International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies it as endangered.

Sometimes the rim rock crowned snakes are even called the rarest North American snakes.

However, it is possible that they are just good at hiding.

The fact is that they spend most of their time underground, and their habitats are covered with impenetrable vegetation.

In recent years, experts have found the rim rock crowned snakes only on Key Largo in the Florida Keys (apparently, there is a stable population of the species there).

In 2015, they met a living individual here, and in 2018 they found its relative killed by a cat.

Four years later, in February 2022, a National Park visitor on Key Largo found a dead T. oolitica on a trail.

From the mouth of the twenty-centimeter reptile protruded a centipede Scolopendra alternans 72.8 millimeters long.

After a visitor reported the find to a park ranger, the snake was picked up, fixed in ethanol along with the prey, and placed in the herpetological collection of the Florida Museum of Natural History.

THE STUDY
Then, Enge’s team of the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute decided to find out what killed the snake.

To answer this question without damaging the valuable specimen of a rare species, the authors stained it with iodine solution and subjected it to computed tomography.

After the work, the specimen was discolored again.

It turned out that the centipede, which became the prey of the snake, is quite large.

If a reptile swallowed a centipede completely, it would take up a third of its volume.

Usually snakes can easily cope even with such large prey relative to their own size, but in this case, the swallowed centipede squeezed the tantilla's trachea at one point.

Apparently, this resulted in fatal suffocation.

Similar cases of suffocation have already been described in the literature, especially when young snakes try to eat too large prey.

(Drew Martin / Florida Museum of Natural History https://bit.ly/3UaAU1V)

According to an alternative assumption, the tantilla died from the bite of a centipede.

Enge’s team did find a bite mark on the underside of the snake's belly, but its strength was not enough to kill the reptile.

The authors also admit that the centipede could inject poison into the snake.

However, the tantilla is unlikely to have died from poisoning.

Although little is known about the effect of centipede venom on snakes, it is assumed that those species that regularly prey on centipedes are immune to their venom.

According to Enge and his co-authors, their study allowed us to learn more about the little-studied rock tantillas.

In particular, in the course of the work, it was possible for the first time to establish exactly what these snakes eat.

Previously, their food preferences were reconstructed based on the diet of closely related species.

Now scientists hope that the approach they have used will allow them to study other samples of rare species that are too valuable for autopsy.

Source:

If you like my content, please consider following, upvoting and commenting. I really appreciate it.
Follow my Telegram channel: https://t.me/stemsteemit

#science #fintech #animals #snakes #news #nftmc