The rim rock crowned snake has no legs.
Not only does this small snake spend most of its life underground, but only about 26 people are known to exist. The survivors are confined to what's left of southern Florida's pines and hammocks.
The Tantilla oolitica was first described in 1966 but until recently nobody knew what it ate. No one has seen its head or tail in the last year.
The dry spell ended in February. A visitor to John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park stumbled upon a dead rock crowned snake while walking.
A giant centipede was suffocating on the corpse of a snake.
Coleman Sheehy, the Florida Museum's herpetology collection manager, said he was amazed when he saw the photos.
It's rare to find specimen that died while eating prey, and I wouldn't have predicted finding something like this. All of us were completely shocked.
This is the first food record of any kind for this species of crowned snake.
Even though the Caribbean giant centipede was trying to swallow the lifeless individual in Key Largo, it had eyes larger than its throat.
There was still another 23 millimeter of centipede to go after the snake's meal got down its gullet.
"We were able to perform a digital autopsy, which allowed us to examine the centipede and snake, including its injuries and gut contents, without ever picking up a scalpel."
According to Gray and her colleagues, asphyxiation is the cause of the snake's death.
The predator's trachea was pinched at the place where the centipede was widest, according to the scans. The air supply may have been cut off by the girth.
The researchers thought about envenoming.
A wound from the centipede's venomous pincers was found on the predator, but apart from a bit of internal bleeding, the centipede's pincers didn't do much damage to the snake.
Other snake species gorge themselves on giant centipedes due to their resistance to venom.
The rim rock crowned snake has been listed as threatened by the state of Florida since 1975.
Only 2% of the snake's pine rockland habitat can be found outside of the Everglades.
For a long time, no one has seen the snake in this area. One of the last places for herpetologists to study is Key Largo.
We don't know if they're still in Florida. Absence of evidence is not proof of absence.
As the species teeters on the verge of extinction, scientists hope the findings will allow them to better understand it.
The rim rock crowned snake was listed as an "Endemic" in 2007. It hasn't received a federal status in the US.
There was a study published.