Now, we find World's Smallest Snake

Now, we find World's Smallest Snake August 4, 2008

One would have thought that with the way man has proliferated the planet and the instruments that we have – we would have identified and documented every species on earth. Apparently not.

Scientists have found now – what they call is the World’s smallest snake.

A U.S. scientist said Sunday he has discovered the globe’s tiniest species of snake in the easternmost Caribbean island of Barbados, with full-grown adults typically stretching less than 4 inches (10 centimeters) long.

S. Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State University whose research teams also have discovered the world’s tiniest lizard in the Dominican Republic and the smallest frog in Cuba, said the snake was found slithering beneath a rock near a patch of Barbadian forest.

Hedges said the tiny-title-holding snake, which is so diminutive it can curl up on a U.S. quarter, is the smallest of the roughly 3,100 known snake species. It will be introduced to the scientific world in the journal “Zootaxa” on Monday.


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