North America’s rarest snake — the rim rock crowned snake, which grows to less than foot in length — was spotted in a Key Largo, Fla., park recently for the first time in four years.
Sadly, researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History say a hiker found the snake dead on the side of a trail in February after it appeared to have choked on a giant centipede about a third of the snake’s length, reported FOX News.
In a study published recently in the journal Ecology, researchers said they believe the size of the centipede cut off the snake’s air supply at its widest part.
“I was amazed when I first saw the photos,” said Coleman Sheehy, the study’s author and Florida Museum’s herpetology collection manager, in a press release.
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“It’s extremely rare to find specimens that died while eating prey, and given how rare this species is, I would never have predicted finding something like this. We were all totally flabbergasted.”
Scientists used CT scans instead of dissection to keep the snake as intact as possible for future study.
“We were able to perform a digital autopsy, which allowed us to examine the centipede and snake, including its injuries and gut contents, without ever picking up a scalpel,” another researcher Jaimi Gray said.
The rim rock crowned snake is only found in a very small part of southeast Florida and the Florida Keys and the head, also known as the crown, is black to light brown, while the belly ranges from yellow to red with black spots.
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