South American ‘Penis Snakes’ Earn Been Learned in Florida

Legless amphibians known as caecilians, more normally is named “rubber eels” and, more memorably, “penis snakes,” were chanced on in South Florida.

The slippery runt creatures had been first chanced on in Tamiami Canal, no longer removed from Miami International Airport, in 2019. A DNA check by the Florida Museum of Natural History has confirmed that they’re genuinely caecilians, native to Colombia and Venezuela, technically making them an “invasive” species.

Caecilians can vary somewhat somewhat in dimension, from exact just a few inches, the overall means as a lot as 5 toes; the specimen captured in the C-4 canal (species Typhlonectes natans) measured 2 toes. They furthermore have a tendency to thrive in shallow, warm our bodies of water with aquatic vegetation, and particular areas of the canal attain fit these requirements. But there is peaceable a lot referring to the penis snake that scientists maintain yet to study.

“Very runt is known about these animals in the wild, but there’s nothing notably harmful about them, and they also maintain no longer seem like serious predators,” wrote Coleman Sheehy from Florida Museum’s Herpetology Series in a file on the animals. “They’ll doubtlessly eat minute animals and ranking eaten by bigger ones,” he added. “This might occasionally be exact one more non-native species in the South Florida mix.”

“At this point, we truly don’ know enough to utter whether or no longer caecilians are established in the C-4 Canal,” he continued. “That’s what we desire to search out out. I didn’t think we would at some point to find a caecilian in Florida. So, this became once a huge shock.”

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