Posted on behalf of Katrina Charles, BA Media Fellow

The story of the smallest snake from last week has generated a storm in Barbados.

Blair Hedges freely admits he is not the first person to ‘discover’ the snake he has called Leptotyphlops carlae. The locals were perfectly well aware of it and he says that most newly “discovered” species are already well known to locals (AP). Hedge’s claim is that he distinguished L. carlae from a related but, he says, distinct species, L. bilineata.

Many local people are still unhappy though. The main point of anger is summed up by Margaret Knight: “How dare this man come in here and name a snake after his wife?”

Damon Corrie, president of the Caribbean Herpetological Society, says "For him to claim that he ‘discovered’ this is like Columbus all over again. He might be the first person to scientifically examine and describe it, but he is certainly not the first person to discover it.” (Bar.)

Corrie says he found the specimen: “Blair Hedges and his wife paid me once to show them where to find Leptotyphlops bilineata in Barbados; I turned over a stone in the parish of St Joseph and showed it to him” (Nation news).

Hedges said that “under established scientific practice, the first person to do a full description of a species is said to have discovered it and gives it a scientific name” (AP).

“Did he not check in a scientific journal or encyclopaedia?”, says Keith Bayley at the Barbados Advocate. Bayley claims that the Barbados Postal Service issued a souvenir sheet in 2001 depicting this same snake. The brochure has the snake listed under the name L. bilineata and says that it is no more than 10 cm long and only a little thicker than the lead of a pencil.

Hedges has responded to his critics via the Barbados Free Press. He says that the scientific paper was the result of work done in his laboratory over the last two years, carefully comparing that species with others from museums around the world. According to Nation News. “His finding was that there was enough DNA evidence to differentiate it from the others”, identifying it as a new species different from the L. bilineata found on neighbouring islands.

Image: Leptotyphlops carlae resting on a US quarter / Blair Hedges, Penn State