Is naming a snake after your wife really a compliment? - August 04, 2008
Posted on behalf of Katrina Charles, BA Media Fellow
It’s perhaps not surprising that the smallest of snakes is making a big splash in the press. What is surprising is that the dark brown snake with two yellow stripes has been called Leptotyphlops carlae, dedicated to Carla, the wife of the researcher who discovered it (AP, BBC).
He says if the new species was any smaller it would not be able to eat anything (ABC). The limited evidence that is available on this snake also suggests that it only lays one very elongated egg at a time, with offspring half its size.
This ten centimetre long snake, reported to be the width of a piece of spaghetti, was found under a rock on the Caribbean island of Barbados. It is the smallest in the genus Leptotyphlops, all of which are pretty small.
In the article published today in Zootaxa, Blair Hedges, the United States biologist, reports the discovery of two snakes from this genus.
“Snakes may be prevented by natural selection from becoming too small because, below a certain size, there may be nothing for their young to eat,” says Hedges (Fox).
He adds, “The fact that tiny snakes produce only one massive egg — relative to the size of the mother — suggests that natural selection is trying to keep the size of hatchlings above a critical limit.”
Carla joins Michael Cousins in the genus lucky-people-who-date-people-who-discover-species. Although his fish would probably eat her snake for breakfast...
Image: Leptotyphlops carlae resting on a US quarter / Blair Hedges, Penn State
Comments
Nothing would have been perhaps more appropriate than this announcement about a snake in the context of a country like India where the yearly snake celebration - the snake festival- NAG PANCHAMEE is due just a day after i.e.6th August.
So it is a queer coincidence that the tiniest creature makes a debut on the eve of a pious day -it deserves some offerings from India-offerings mixed with affection and care and not the usual response of awe and veneration which we generally show when confronted with a big snake ! What a small and cute beauty ? Love from India too.
Posted by: Dr.Arvind Mishra | August 5, 2008 01:59 PM
Reminds me of Lyuba, the frozen woolly mammoth calf named for the wife of the Siberian reindeer herder that discovered it. What an homage!
Posted by: Brendan Maher | August 5, 2008 02:01 PM