What Do Snakes Discovered In Ecuador Eat?
Many people wonder what snakes eat, and although it’s an easy question to answer, since most feed on rodents or small birds, there are species whose diet is more curious. So, let’s know what snakes discovered in Ecuador eat.
What do snakes discovered in Ecuador eat?
We are talking about five species recently discovered in Ecuador, which have an unusual diet for these snakes: based on slugs and snails, which they consume in the tropical forests to which they are endemic.
However, what stands out the most is not what the snakes we are talking about eat: the most amazing thing is how they are adapted to eat. Its jaws are modified to suck these invertebrates and extract the entire body from the bark.
These new species of snakes were discovered in nocturnal observations, which made the researchers’ work even more difficult. However, there is a reason behind this finding, and that is the activity period of their favorite prey, the aforementioned snails.
discovering new species
The discovery of new species is increasingly common. Recently, a new species of orangutan was found, while an extinct bird has reappeared in the Bahamas, so it is interesting to see these new snakes in one of the hottest spots in the planet’s biodiversity.
The problem is that hundreds of years ago we easily discovered those species that looked very different from others, and many of the more recent discoveries are based on little different patterns of ecology or behavior.
In this sense, we have a tool that was not available a few centuries ago, and that is the sampling of genetic material. Thanks to DNA, we can know whether two animals are of the same species or not, and this technique has been used in conjunction with morphological analysis.
Discover the five species of snakes discovered in Ecuador
Although it is interesting to know what snakes discovered in Ecuador eat, it should be noted that it was also possible to know a lot about the different species.
The Bev Ridgely snail and the Oswaldo Báez snail , for example, are vulnerable species threatened by deforestation, as is the George Jett snail , found in areas that are being destroyed by livestock.
The Klebba snail seems to be the most abundant, as it seems adapted to the presence of modified habitats. However, the Bob Ridgely snail is in danger of extinction, due to the fragmentation of its habitat into two reserves: one Peruvian and the other Ecuadorian.
Why are they called snakes?
As you may have noticed, one of the biggest curiosities of these new species are their names. You may have thought they are named after their discoverers, but they decided to auction them off to raise money, which will allow them to fund conservation measures for these species.
Thus, these new species have the names of their sponsors, which will improve the protection of the Buenaventura Reserve protected area , which is managed by the Jocotoco Foundation, artisans of this initiative together with part of the multidisciplinary team that discovered the snakes, formed by Tropical Herping and by the American Museum of Natural History.
