The rim rock crowned snake (Tantilla oolitica) is the rarest snake in North America, and scientists hadn’t glimpsed one in the wild in more than four years. But when one of the elusive snakes recently turned up in a state park in Florida, the sighting wasn’t a happy one — the snake was a corpse in a gruesome wildlife death scene.
A visitor to the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park on Key Largo found the dead snake on Feb. 28; it had choked on a giant centipede that was still lodged partway down its gullet. (The centipede, which had been swallowed headfirst, was also deceased.)
Rim rock crowned snakes are nonvenomous and have black heads and pinkish-tan bodies that measure 6 to 11 inches (15 to 28 centimeters) long, and they are found only in the Florida Keys and along the state’s southeastern Atlantic coast, according to the University of Florida’s Department of Wildlife
Ecology and Conservation (opens in new tab). The snakes have been on the state’s list of threatened species since 1975; the last living specimen was spotted in 2015, while the last recorded sighting was a dead individual that had been killed by a
catin 2018, said lead study author Kevin Enge, an associate research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
“Rim rock crowned snakes have never been easy to find on Key Largo or elsewhere,” as these small, burrowing snakes spend most of their time hiding under leaf litter or in soil pockets, and are typically only seen after heavy rains force them to the surface, Enge explained.
“For snake lovers who keep a species life list, this is the Holy Grail in Florida — but most snake hunters have never seen one despite weeks of searching,” he told Live Science in an email.
When the park visitor found the dead snake, which measured about 8 inches (21 cm) long, the reptile’s mouth was gaping wide and the back end of a 3-inch-long (7.3 cm) juvenile Caribbean giant centipede (Scolopendra alternans) was hanging out, protruding about 1 inch (2.3 cm). Park rangers then contacted scientists with the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) in Gainesville, who brought the snake and centipede to the museum’s herpetology collection. There, researchers preserved and analyzed the pair, hoping that the specimens united in death would reveal clues about the snake’s habits and biology.
