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