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Spaghetti-Thin Snake Is World's Smallest

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

"My (two collected) animals were found next to a patch of forest, so I surmise that they require a forest (habitat) like most other native organisms," he said. "The islands were completely covered with forest originally, and now there is almost no forest remaining."

If Barbados residents continue to engage in habitat destruction by replacing forest lands with buildings and farms, the threadsnake could, he said, go extinct "because these animals live on islands, they have nowhere to go when they lose their habitat."

The island isolation likely explains many animal size extremes, both big and small, since species over time evolve to fill ecological niches unoccupied by other organisms. On land, for example, an insect might replace the smallest snake's spot in the food chain but, on water-surrounded Barbados, the snake evolved to fill that spot. Information on other snake size extremes may be found here.

Robert Henderson, curator of vertebrate zoology at the Milwaukee Public Museum, told Discovery News that he agrees with the findings, saying that "the West Indies harbor the smallest species of frog and lizard; may as well have the smallest snake too."

Herpetologist Robert Powell, who is a professor of biology at Avila College, also supports the new research.

"What I find most exciting is that we are seeing how nature pushes the lower size limits of body size," Powell told Discovery News. "I remember as a student being fascinated by the smallest known frog, lizard and snake -- marveling at how all of the necessary parts fit and worked."

"Since then," he added, "those size limits, which we then thought were immutable, have been extended again and again. Dr. Hedges seems to think that this time, nature has run up against a real wall, and that body size for a snake couldn't get any smaller, but I wouldn't bet against him finding a smaller species next year."

Related Links:

Discovery News blog: Born Animal

How Stuff Works: What happens when animals evolve in isolation?

Caribbean Animal Welfare

Herp-pedia