The smallest snake in the world is so small that we haven’t seen him for twenty years, and he wanted a year of research in the Barbados forests to rediscover a specimen.
Is called Tetracheilostoma Carlaeis endemic of the Caribbean island and had been declared “Lost to science“(therefore not technically extinct but substantially unavailable) by Re: Wild, the same association, founded among others by Leonardo DiCaprio, who recently announced its rediscovery.
Unobtainable. The story of the smallest snake in the world is relatively recent. Its existence is even known to 1889, when the first observations in nature were recorded in the tropics; But since then this animal has been recognized as a species only in 2008, and observed “just a handful of times»,, According to the official of the Barbados Minister of the Environment, Connor Blades.
It is one of the responsible for the discovery: it has been for more than a year that, together with the experts of King: Wild, he performs regular shipments in the forests of the island, raising rocks and looking under the roots of the trees.
Hidden under a rock. Last March, finally, the team found it, lifting a rock that had been trapped under the root of a tree. At first glance it looked like a worm, the experts took him to the laboratory to confirm his identity: his appearance is in fact similar to that of Indoyphlops braminusanother very small snake present in the Barbados forests as an invasive species.
We protect the forests! Speaking of forests: on the Caribbean island, only 2% of the original ones remain intact, while the others were razed to the ground during the colonial era to make it cultivated fields. They are therefore a particularly precious environment, and they are even more so now that it has been confirmed that the smallest snake in the world is still among us.
To be protected. Its reproductive habits make it particularly in need of protections: they reproduce sexually and the females lay only one egg at a time, so every single deposition is essential for the survival of the species.
Of course, now that we know that Tetracheilostoma Carlae He still lives in the Barbados forests, the local authorities will move to protect him and prevent the end of other endemic species of the island who have expanded since we began to live it.