Gerald William Richards, 79 Oct. 1, 1945 ~ June 13 Gerald William Richards, 79 Oct. 1, 1945 ~ June 13 Mr. Gerald William Richards, 79, of Cookeville, passed away at his residence surrounded by his family Friday, June 13, in Cookeville. Gerald was …

Nelda Sue Looper, 84 June 15, 1941 ~ June 12 Nelda Sue Looper, 84 June 15, 1941 ~ June 12 Ms. Nelda Sue Looper, 84, of Cookeville, passed away Thursday, June 12, at the Cookeville Regional Hospital in Cookeville. Nelda was born Sunday, June 15, …

Allie D Lois Neely, 82 March 2, 1943 ~ June 15 Allie D Lois Neely, 82 March 2, 1943 ~ June 15 Mrs. Allie D Lois Neely, 82, of Cookeville, passed away at Cookeville Regional Hospital in Cookeville Sunday, June 15. She was born Tuesday, March 2, …

Wanda Gene Oakley Boswell, 78 Jan. 27, 1949 ~ June 13 Wanda Gene Oakley Boswell, 78 Jan. 27, 1949 ~ June 13 Mrs. Wanda Gene Oakley Boswell, 78, of the Allred Community of Overton Co., passed away on Friday, June 13, at the Vanderbilt Medical Center in …

No one had spotted the world’s smallest known snake for nearly two decades

This photo provided by Re:wild shows the Barbados threadsnake next to a ruler, in the Scotland District of St. Andrew, Barbados, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (Connor Blades/Re:wild via AP)

This photo provided by Re:wild shows the Barbados threadsnake next to a ruler, in the Scotland District of St. Andrew, Barbados, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (Connor Blades/Re:wild via AP)

This photo provided by Re:wild shows the Barbados threadsnake next to a ruler, in the Scotland District of St. Andrew, Barbados, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (Connor Blades/Re:wild via AP)

This photo provided by Re:wild shows the Barbados threadsnake next to a ruler, in the Scotland District of St. Andrew, Barbados, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (Connor Blades/Re:wild via AP)

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — For nearly two decades, no one had spotted the world’s smallest-known snake.

Some scientists worried that maybe the Barbados threadsnake had become extinct, but one sunny morning, Connor Blades lifted a rock in a tiny forest in the eastern Caribbean island and held his breath.

“After a year of searching, you begin to get a little pessimistic,” said Blades, project officer with the Ministry of Environment in Barbados.

The snake can fit comfortably on a coin, so it was able to elude scientists for almost 20 years. Too tiny to identify with the naked eye, Blades placed it in a small glass jar and added soil, substrate and leaf litter.

Several hours later, in front of a microscope at the University of the West Indies, Blades looked at the specimen. It wriggled in the petri dish, making it nearly impossible to identify.

“It was a struggle,” Blades recalled, adding that he shot a video of the snake and finally identified it thanks to a still image.

It had pale yellow dorsal lines running through its body, and its eyes were located on the side of its head.

“I tried to keep a level head,” Blades recalled, knowing that the Barbados threadsnake looks very much like a Brahminy blind snake, best known as the flower pot snake, which is a bit longer and has no dorsal lines.

On Wednesday, the Re:wild conservation group, which is collaborating with the local environment ministry, announced the rediscovery of the Barbados threadsnake.

“Rediscovering one of our endemics on many levels is significant,” said Justin Springer, Caribbean program officer for Re:wild who helped rediscover the snake along with Blades. “It reminds us that we still have something important left that plays an important role in our ecosystem.”

The Barbados threadsnake has only been seen a handful of times since 1889. It was on a list of 4,800 plant, animal and fungi species that Re:wild described as “lost to science.”

The snake is blind, burrows in the ground, eats termites and ants and lays one single, slender egg. Fully grown, it measures up to four inches (10 centimeters).

“They’re very cryptic,” Blades said. “You can do a survey for a number of hours, and even if they are there, you may actually not see them.”

But on March 20 at around 10:30 a.m., Blades and Springer surrounded a jack-in-the-box tree in central Barbados and started looking under rocks while the rest of the team began measuring the tree, whose distribution is very limited in Barbados.

“That’s why the story is so exciting,” Springer said. “It all happened around the same time.”

S. Blair Hedges, a professor at Temple University and director of its center for biology, was the first to identify the Barbados threadsnake. Previously, it was mistakenly lumped in with another species.

In 2008, Hedges’ discovery was published in a scientific journal, with the snake baptized Tetracheilostoma carlae, in honor of his wife.

“I spent days searching for them,” Hedges recalled. “Based on my observations and the hundreds of rocks, objects that I turned over looking for this thing without success, I do think it is a rare species.”

That was June 2006, and there were only three other such specimens known at the time: two at a London museum and a third at a museum collection in California that was wrongly identified as being from Antigua instead of Barbados, Hedges said.

Hedges said that he didn’t realize he had collected a new species until he did a genetic analysis.

“The aha moment was in the laboratory,” he said, noting that the discovery established the Barbados threadsnake as the world’s smallest-known snake.

Hedges then became inundated for years with letters, photographs and emails from people thinking they had found more Barbados threadsnakes. Some of the pictures were of earthworms, he recalled.

“It was literally years of distraction,” he said.

Scientists hope the rediscovery means that the Barbados threadsnake could become a champion for the protection of wildlife habitat.

A lot of endemic species on the tiny island have gone extinct, including the Barbados racer, the Barbados skink and a particular species of cave shrimp.

“I hope they can get some interest in protecting it,” Hedges said. “Barbados is kind of unique in the Caribbean for a bad reason: it has the least amount of original forest, outside of Haiti.”

The few wild animals, such as monkeys, hares, and mongooses, are considered pests by farmers. Birds include doves, hummingbirds, sparrows, egrets, and yellow breasts. Marine life includes flying fish , sprats, green dolphins, kingfish, barracudas, mackerels, and parrot fish .

Very little of the original vegetation remains on Barbados; the pale green of cultivated sugarcane has become the characteristic colour of the landscape. Tropical trees, including poinciana, mahogany, frangipani, and cabbage palm, are widespread, and flowering shrubs adorn parks and gardens.

The climate of Barbados is generally pleasant. The temperature does not usually rise above the mid-80s F (about 30 °C) or fall below the low 70s F (about 22 °C). There are two seasons: the dry season, from early December to May, and the wet season, which lasts for the rest of the year. Average rainfall is about 60 inches (1,525 mm) annually, but, despite the small size of the island, rainfall varies, rising from the low-lying coastal areas to the high central district. Barbados lies in the southern border of the Caribbean hurricane ( tropical cyclone ) zone, and hurricanes have caused great devastation, notably in 1780, 1831, 1898, and 1955.

People

Ethnic groups and languages People of African descent and of mixed African-European descent make up more than nine-tenths of the population. A small fraction of the population is of European (mainly British) descent, and there is an even smaller number of inhabitants who originated from the Indian subcontinent. There are small groups of Syrians, Lebanese, and Chinese. There is also a sizable expatriate community—primarily from the United States and Great Britain—made up of international civil servants, businesspersons, and retirees. English is the official language, and a nonstandard English called Bajan is also spoken.

Religion The majority of the population is Christian. Anglicanism, the religious legacy of the British colonists who arrived in the 17th century, is the largest single denomination. Other churches established since the 18th century are the Methodist and the Moravian. Since the 19th century, however, significant religious diversity has developed. Pentecostal churches have large congregations, and the Seventh-day Adventist church has a significant minority of adherents. Smaller groups include Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roman Catholics, Bahaʾīs, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims.

Settlement patterns Barbados is densely populated. More than one-third of the population is concentrated in Bridgetown and the surrounding area. Most of the farmland is owned by large landowners or corporations. As a result, “tenantries”—clusters of wooden houses locally known as chattel houses and located on the borders of the large estates—are as common as villages. They are usually owned by the occupants but stand on rented ground from which they may easily be moved for relocation to another site. Most of them have electricity and running water. Bridgetown: Chamberlain Bridge Chamberlain Bridge over the Constitution River, with the Independence Arch (right), Bridgetown, Barbados. (more) In Bridgetown’s commercial and administrative centre, multistory buildings are altering the features of the 19th-century town. Apart from Bridgetown, the largest towns or settlements are Speightstown, Oistins, and Holetown.