Florida is known for its alligators, sharks, and other weird critters, and a recent scenario involving a dead snake, another hungry reptile, and an insect is confusing Twitter users.
Evangeline Cummings, assistant provost and director of University of Florida Online, recently uploaded a video of a coral snake eating a rat snake while being bothered by a wasp, HuffPost reported. Cummings asked the Twitter community for help, since she had a lot of questions about the incident.
Um ok, @UFEntomology and @MartaWayneUF , I believe I just witnessed a BEE 🐝 stinging a CORAL SNAKE 🐍 while the CORAL was dining on a RAT (?) SNAKE 🐍 and I need your support to process this. @UF #FloridaBackyard pic.twitter.com/djbJJGxaUk
— Evangeline Cummings (@EvieCummings23) October 17, 2019
In the footage, the coral snake is chowing down on the dead rat snake, when the bee suddenly lands on top of the hungry reptile. The coral snake, which was startled by the insect, was thrashing wildly in order to get the bee to go away or because it was in pain from a sting.
After talking with a doctoral candidate and other experts on social media, Cummings posted a potential theory for the bizarre encounter:
Youch! Even venomous snakes don’t like yellow jacket stings. Although coral snakes aren’t great climbers, I’m sure a free meal was good motivation. The yellowjacket- which also love meat- must have thought they had claim to it!
— Natalie Claunch (@heart2herp) October 18, 2019
So we’ve now settled on our favorite theory: rat snake was dropped by a hawk or similar and landed in the rosebush. (But the rat snake is somewhat twisted around the branches so I wonder if when I was dropped it was still partially alive and tried to free itself and could not.🤔)
— Evangeline Cummings (@EvieCummings23) October 20, 2019
The rat snake may have been dropped by another predator, which attracted the coral snake and bee to the area. But, it’s still unclear if the rat snake was alive or dead when it landed on the tree.
Only in Florida…
More on Geek.com:
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