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Back in the day, my grandfather was in Vietnam.. Although he lived in Saigon, he worked closely with the Hmong, the people of the forested mountains which run up the country like a green spine. Sometimes he would rhapsodize about the otherworldly beauty of these tropical cloud forests where he saw sights that seemed to come from times long gone. Beyond the bronze age settlements and floating villages of the Hmong Grandpa said he saw jewel-like orchids and mysterious plants there which were wholly unknown. He also said he witnessed amazing birds, insects, and reptiles and heard rumors of strange animals that seemed to belong in myths (maybe like the saola, which is real (barely)…or maybe like the baku, which is not).
All of which brings us to contemporary news! Back in 2019, a group of American and Vietnamese biologists were studying Vietnam’s northern Ha Giang province (which borders south China) when they found a bizarre snake. The snake did not have bright-light photoreceptors in its eyes and it had strange scales like smooth river pebbles arranged in odd patterns The snake was fossorial–a burrower like the amphibian caecilians. Most strangely of all it had iridescent scales but the colorful opal iridescence was atop dark scales of indigo, lavender, brown, and gray. The snake was unknown to science and it has just been announced as an entirely new species–Achalinus zugorum. It is a member of the genus of snakes called Achalinus, the odd scaled snakes, a poorly understood genus which previously only had 13 known species.
Snakes of the Achalinus genus do not have overlapping scales, instead their scales spread out (perhaps to facilitate a life spent hunting beneath the leaf litter and the forest duff). They seem to be a basal lineage which branched from the evolutionary tree of snakes before the ancestors of other snakes did. Not only their appearance. but also their behavior is very different from that of other snakes. Unfortunately, because of their burrowing lifestyle, the odd-scaled snakes hold tight to their mysteries. A Vietnamese herpetologist who was describing the new species said that during decades of collecting snakes in Vietnam’s snake-filled jungles he has only captured half a dozen Achalinus snakes.
The discovery highlights how much we do not know about creatures and ecosystems which are disappearing quickly. Fortunately, researchers at the Smithsonian sequenced the DNA for Achalinus zugorum before returning the single specimen to Vietnam. We may know nothing about this carnival glass serpent from the underworld, but we also know everything about it (if we ever learn to truly read what we have written down). It excites me to imagine these snakes and other unknown species pursuing their secret and unintelligible lives among the orchid roots, and myceli of unknown fungi in these forests. It makes me anxious though, too. How long will this cryptic & beautiful hidden world even exist before it is all swept away?
Usually news from Florida is pretty weird or disturbing, so it is nice to have a feel-good story for a change! Recently a camper hiking in Ocala National Forest spotted something which hasn’t been seen in Marion County since 1969–a beautiful rainbow…snake. The rainbow snake (Farancia erytrogramma) is a secretive Colubrid snake which is rarely seen since it lives most of its life underwater or underground. The snakes live on eels, minnows, tadpoles, and amphibians which are eaten live. Not only are rainbow snakes fossorial/aquatic creatures of the underworld, they also tend to live in the most remote portions of densely forested swamps (which may explain why it has been so long since anyone has seen one in this region just north of Orlando). The snakes grow to a maximum size of 90 to 165 centimeters (2.5 to 5.5 feet) and are non-venomous.
The rainbow snake sounds like a Disney creation (or a primordial deity) but its common name is really just an acknowledgement of its beautiful coloration. The rainbow snake is black, but it has gorgeous bands of brightest yellow and scarlet running vertically down the entire length of its body. Additionally some specimens has bright white/cream rings running horizontally across these stripes (or buttermilk outlines around scales). the whole creature looks like a fancy trapper keeper from 1989!
I’m not the only one who remembers these things, right?
Because they live in blackwater creeks, cypress swamps, or deep inside mud flats, it is difficult to assess the population health of rainbow snakes and whether they are being out-competed (or straight-up eaten!) by competitors like invasive constrictors and pythons. However the fact that they are being spotted in old habitats seems like fairly encouraging news–particularly in a news cycle where the stories of furtive wild creatures grows increasingly bleak.
I wanted to do a short post about a snake from my childhood: Heterodon platirhinos, the eastern hog-nosed snake. This snake is a harmless fossorial colubrid snake which lives from New Hampshire to Minnesota and ranges from the southern parts of Canada down to northern Florida. It lives in woodlands and dense meadows where it burrows in sandy and loamy soil and hides in leaf litter hunting for its favorite prey—amphibians–especially toads.
The hog-nosed snake is mildy poisonous, but its fangs are in the back of its mouth (the better to grip struggling toads) and its venom is not harmful to humans. The snake is incorrectly known as a puff adder because, when threatened, it hisses, puffs itself up, and flattens its neck out like a little cobra. Do not confuse the hog-nosed snake for a real puff adder, Bitis arietans, a deadly viper indigenous to Africa south of the Sahal.
The hog nosed snake also has another theatrical trick for evading predators: it plays dead with such gusto that it begins to reek of death, expels foul slime, and even bleeds from the mouth. The snake is so very convincing at looking dead that, when I was a boy-scout, we were warned not to harass the entertaining little reptile lest it harm itself with its zeal(although perhaps this was mere PR for the master thespian).
“He was so young….Whyyyy?”
The hog-nosed snake is also very cute, with beautiful ruddy leaf patterns, a blunt little nose and eyes at the front of its head. I haven’t seen one in decades—I wonder how they are doing out there in the woods of southern Ohio.
The Barbados threadsnake–the smallest known snake in the world
The smallest known snake in the world is the Barbados Threadsnake (Leptotyphlops carlae), a species of blind threadsnake so small they were only discovered in 2008 (despite living on a heavily populated, highly studied island). The adult snakes measure only 10 cm, (4 inches) long. Herpetologists believe these tiny snakes are at threshold of viable size for snakes: if they were any smaller they would not be able to hunt or reproduce.
Female Barbados threadsnakes lay a single egg which is huge relative to the size of the mother. The newly hatched snakes are already half as large as adults. Like caecilians or other blind snakes, Barbados threadsnakes are fossorial–they live and hunt underground (which is one of the reasons it took so long to find them). The little threadsnakes live on the larvae of ants and termites.
The island of Barbados is mostly covered with cities, houses, farms, and roads
Not only are Barbados threadsnakes miniscule. Their remaining forest territory is tiny. Barbados is heavily developed and no original old growth forests exist. The threadsnakes live in secondary forests which regrew from the vestiges of long-vanished woods. Their entire habitat is thought to be no more than a square kilometer or two.
Pink Fairy Armadillo (Chlamyphorus truncates)
There are twenty extant species of armadillos–new world placental mammals covered with armored plates. The smallest of these armored creatures is the Pink Fairy Armadillo (Chlamyphorus truncates) which is only 9-12 centimeters in total length (about 4 or 5 inches). The diminutive creature weighs slightly more than 100 grams when mature and inhabits the central drylands of Argentina. It has multiple hard ring-like plates of delicate pink which it can close into a box form for protection (although its first defensive strategy is to dig into the ground). The animal has tiny eyes and a torpedo-like head for pushing into the sand. The portions of the Pink Fairy Armadillo not covered with plates are covered in dense white fur. Like the golden mole of Namibia, the pink fairy armadillo is a sand swimmer: the little animal agitates the fine, dry sand with its powerful claws and literally swims through the turbulence with its hard bullet shaped body. The armadillos are also like the golden mole in that they can lower their metabolism to levels unheard of among other placental mammals. However armadillos are not closely related to the golden mole—or indeed to any other placental mammals other than fellow Xenarthra (the sloths, armadillos, and anteaters). South America spent a long portion of geological time as an island and the mammals there had a long time to develop on their own. It is still not known whether Xenarthrans like the Pink Fairy Armadillo are truly Eutherians or whether they are the descendants of the ancestors of the Eutherians (sorry: the language of cladistics does not lend itself to eloquent explanations and all of the names sound like they come from a far-away planet—for example “Xenarthrans”).
I would like to tell you more about the Pink Fairy Armadillo, but I am unable to do so. Since it lives underground, the animal is rarely seen in the wild. It is even more unusual in captivity where it does not long survive the shocks and stresses of zoo living (additionally it seems unable to live on anything other than local invertebrates). This is unfortunate as it is believed that the Pink Fairy Armadillo is struggling in the wild. It is presumed to be declining in numbers–a victim to habitat loss from human activity. I used wiggle words like “believed” and “presumed” because nobody really has any idea about the actual populations of Pink Fairy Armadillos.
In the absence of real information here is a little gallery of Pink Fairy Armadillo artwork. Enjoy these pictures, it is profoundly unlikely you will ever see a real Pink Fairy Armadillo in the real world (which is sad because I find them curiously endearing). I particularly like the cartoon of the Pink Fairy Armadillo dreaming of transcendence into a mythical fairy being.
Drawing by Frohickey
Digital Artwork by Loba Feroz
Art by Guertelmaus
Sculpture by Michelle de Bruin
Cartoon by Blade Zulah
The Short-Beaked Echidna (Source: M McKelvey/P Rismiller/)
Last year featured an in-depth examination of Echidna, the terrifying “mother of monsters” from Greek mythology. To start this year on a glorious high note, here is an essay concerning the actual echidnas (Tachyglossidae), a family of mammals from Australia and New Guinea. The echidnas were much wronged when explorers named them after a hellish demigoddess. Although I have never met—or even seen—a living echidna, they are one of my favorite creatures for many reasons. Combining a gentle temperament with fascinatingly alien intelligence, the echidna is a delightful animal whose taxonomical oddity reveals the strange paths of fate which life takes over great expanses of time.
Along with the charismatic platypus, the echidna is the last of the egg-laying monotremes. Monotremes are a very different sort of mammal than the other two major divisions of mammals, the eutheria and the metatheria. The teeming eutheria (familiar mammals like shrews, manatees, picas, goats, and humans) nourish their fetal young by means of a placenta. The ancient metatheria (marsupials) sustain their developing young in a special pouch. The monotremes predate both groups and give evidence of mammals’ origins. Genetic studies suggest that the monotremes originated from some reptile-like ancestor about 220 million years ago. The long and tangled family history of the mammals and their antecedents will have to wait for another post–suffice to say that monotremes have been here for an extraordinarily long time. The surviving monotremes, however, are not primitive atavists, but extraordinarily advanced descendants of those ancient progenitor mammals. They have evolved and survived in varying fashions over the long eons. Over those millions and millions of years, the echidna developed a very interesting brain.
Echidnas have the largest neocortex relative to bodymass of any creature. The neocortex (which Hercule Poirot always creepily referred to as “the little grey cells”) is involved in higher brain functions such as spacial cognition, logic, and problem solving. This special tool has taken the echidna far: like humans, and unlike almost all other creatures, echidnas live in very diverse habitats. Actually it is the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) which lives in different habitats—the other two extant species live in tropical New Guinea and are little known to science. Although all three species seem to share most traits, I am really writing solely about Tachyglossus aculeatus which ranges from the hot dry desert scrub, to the tropical rainforest, to the coast, to the cold snows of the Australian Alps (where they can lower their body temperature a few degrees above freezing and hibernate). Echidnas live on termites and ants, omnipresent social insects which are evolutionary winners in their own right. Echidnas dig up these insects with powerful razor claws and gobble them down using a long sticky tongue which zips in and out of a toothless tube-like mouth. Echidnas are not known to fight each other or other animals. In the great evolutionary battle they are pacifists (provided you are not an ant or termite) and if approached aggressively they will curl into a ball and trust their sharp spine-like hairs to keep them safe. They are also phenomenal burrowers and can quickly tunnel down through anything other than solid stone.
An orphaned puggle being handraised.
Because of their cleverness, relatively little is known about echidnas. They are difficult to capture since they disdain baits and can figure out most traps. Similarly, in zoos, echidnas have proven extremely gifted at escape. Their mating habits are largely mysterious to us but seem to involve non-confrontational competition. The female echidna is followed for an extended period of time by a train of interested males. In response to an unknown signal, the male echidnas begin frantically digging, trying to nudge one another out of the way. Just how the victor emerges from this competition is unknown, but one the female has chosen, the other males walk away with no obvious rancor. After laying her egg, the female immediately rolls it into a pouch-like fold on her abdomen. Once the puggle has hatched, the mother echidna solicitously tends it for seven months, after which it roams off free and solitary.
Echidnas have an extra sense, electoreceptivity, but for them it is much weaker than it is in their close cousins the platypuses. It has also been noted that echidnas vibrate. Water placed near captive echidnas shows distinct ripples in the surface. Perhaps they vocalize on frequencies beneath the range of human hearing (as do elephants). Speaking of captivity, Echidnas have survived for up to 30 years in zoos even though it is a difficult environment for the blithesome free-roaming animals. It is believed they live twice that long in the wild—but, again, nobody really knows.
Agh! Get away from there! I though you had a large neocortex!
Likewise nobody knows the echidnas’ total population numbers or how healthy the species is. What is known is that, sadly, even the intelligent and peaceful echidnas are running into problems in the modern world. Like other good-hearted pedestrians, echidnas are often killed by careless drivers. Echidnas face increasing habitat destruction from human houses, farms, and roads. Likewise they must deal with new predators, the dingos, which have discovered that urinating on balled-up echidnas will cause the latter to uncurl for a moment in stunned disgust (giving the ruthless dogs a chance to rip into their guts).
I wonder what echidnas think of us. They know of our traps, our radio-tracking devices, and they know how to avoid aborigine hunters. They are becoming wise to our deadly cars and to the dirty tricks of dingos. Still they remain curious about people and will sometimes come out of the wilderness in groups to examine our suburbs and cities before melting back into the wild. Humankind took a long while to understand that echidnas are not dim-witted reptilian pincushions but rather clever and highly developed generalists. Do they generously think the same of us, or do they put humankind from their mind as something foul when they head back to the ancient, open outback?
