| Explanation: You'd hardly
notice it. This is a Sharptail Snake, a little-known resident of forests of northern California, western Oregon and Washington, and southern British Columbia, Canada. Blending nicely into dark conifer bark from afar, up close this snake is truly beautiful with reddish-brown, pink, and purple hues on the dorsum, and lateral stripes on the ventrum. The species name comes from the spiney tail tip, although the snake is docile and harmless. The spine might be to thwart predators or to aid burrowing, but we really don't know its function.
Sharptail Snakes are secretive denizens of damp, lowland forests, where they inhabit old, down rotting logs, which in turn contribute to forest ecosystem biodiversity and productivity by serving as a source of organic matter.
Thus, Sharptail Snakes can serve as indicators of this component of old-growth forests and forest health.
Sharptail Snakes specialize on eating slugs. To do so, they have evolved unusually long teeth for grasping, retaining, and swallowing the slippery prey.
First described in 1852, this species may have been suffering local declines and extinctions as old-growth forests have been logged and their large, moist, down wood components have been lost. But we have only
scant population data on this evolutionarily unique and potentially endangered ghost of the forest. |
