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Nightmare death scene as rare snake chokes and dies on giant venomous centipede
READ MORE: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's children Archie and Lilibet are now prince and princessNow, while this sounds as though the snake must have choked after biting off a bit more than it could chew, researchers have also suggested the snake may have succumbed to a lethal dose of the centipede's venom - as published in a new study in the journal The Scientific Naturalist on September 4, according to LiveScience.Measuring between six to 11 inches, the rim rock snake is not venomous, is only usually found in the Florida Keys and along the state's south-eastern Atlantic coast, and has been on the state's list of threatened species since 1975."Rim rock crowned snakes have never been easy to find on Key Largo or elsewhere," said lead study author Kevin Enge, an associate research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission."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."When the park visitor found the 8ins dead snake, the reptile's mouth was gaping wide and the back end of a three-inch-long juvenile Caribbean giant centipede was hanging out.This is when park rangers contacted scientists with the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) in Gainesville, who brought the snake and centipede to the museum's herpetology collection. "As a snake biologist in Florida, this finding was extremely exciting," said study co-author Coleman Sheehy, a researcher and collection manager at the FLMNH.
