My
scientist friend Kevel Lindsay from the Island Resources Foundation recently
posted a picture of a little snake on Facebook. He identified it as a ground
snake (Magliophis exiguum exiguum), a rarely seen Virgin Islands native, and
expressed his concern about the survival of local species due to land
development and loss of habitat.
Unfortunately
photos of snakes are not too popular, so only a couple of people ‘Liked’ that
post.
Imagine
my excitement when shortly afterwards I spotted this little pinkish guy by the
side of the road right near my house in Fish Bay.
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| Dried up Amphisbaena fenestrate. Photo Gail Karlsson |
I wouldn’t have even noticed
it if I hadn’t been pulling up some weeds next to it.
At
first I thought it was a big worm, but then I saw that it had a face and a
mouth with teeth. I called my husband over. “Look a little snake! I have to
show Kevel.” It wasn’t moving, so I was able to get my camera and take some
pictures of it.
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| Close up of Amphisbaena face. Photo Gail Karlsson |
I
posed it next to a scorpion exoskeleton I happened to have on my shelf in order
to show its size, and sent that photo off to Kevel in an email titled “Dried up
snake” with the message “Look what we found!”
My
kids had reported seeing a blind snake one time when they went to camp at the
VI Environmental Resource Station, but I had never seen one myself – or any
other kind of snake here.
Kevel
wrote back “Amphisbaena” and also forwarded it to Dr. Renata Platenberg, a
herpetologist and Assistant Professor of
Natural Resource Management at UVI. She confirmed that it was an Amphisbaena fenestrata and kindly shared a picture of a live
one. I asked why the one I found was
all dried up like that on the ground instead or rotten or eaten up by
something. Apparently they are mostly found in moist forest areas and under the
ground, and their skin does not protect them from the sun, so they can quickly
become desiccated.
 |
| Live amphisbaena fenestrate. Photo Renata Platenberg |
Well, that was a
surprise. I went on the Internet to find out more, and saw on the kingsnake.com
website that “until recently they were considered to be legless lizards, but
they are now placed their own taxonomic order, Amphisbaenia, apart from lizards
and snakes”.
I
asked Renata about that and she said she has always considered them to be
neither lizards nor snakes, though the most recent genetic studies place them
closer to lizards. It seems they still have some traces of their former
shoulders and pelvic girdles, which would clearly distinguish them from snakes.
The
name ‘amphisbaena’ is from the Greek, meaning ‘goes both ways’ – because the
head and tail look similar, and they can actually move backwards and forwards
making tunnels underground. They eat insects and other invertebrates they find
in the ground or under rocks and fallen trees. They don’t come to the surface
very often – usually only if they get flooded out or otherwise disturbed. It is
hard to say why this one was caught and flash-dried by our house. There hadn’t
been any big rain storm that day to wash it out.
The VI Division
of Fish and Wildlife reports that these creatures are not very abundant, and
very few people have seen them. (Renata said she has looked and looked for them
for 10 years and has only seen a handful.) Mostly gardeners and farmers come
across them when they are digging in the soil. Or people’s cats drag them in.
Our cat is much too old now to catch lizards, even legless ones. I guess we
just got lucky.
Now we are going
to keep watching for a live one.
