The four snakes will remain on campus as they are not candidates for release into the wild.
Students at Russellville High School, with the support of teacher Chance Duncan, are believed to be the first secondary educational institution in the world to successfully hatch out the endangered Louisiana pine snake (Pituophis ruthveni).
Under Chance’s supervision, the class was able to successfully get a pair of the endangered species to mate, and after seven years of trying, the female laid a clutch of viable eggs on March 10 and four hatchlings emerged July 21. While the hatchlings aren’t a candidate for release into the wild, students in Duncan’s class will learn how to extract DNA to definitively identify the snakes as pine snakes and to calculate the genetics of the hatchlings compared to the parents to determine how much genetics they share, as well as the genetics between the baby snakes.
The Louisiana pine snake spends most of its time underground, beneath the forest floor. Photo by Michael Sealy, USFWS
“I have always kept animals in my classroom because we talk about various concepts in biology related to species survival and adaptations to particular environments,” Duncan told KATV Little Rock. “I have always found it helpful to have the animals in the room so that it can illustrate some of these sort of abstract concepts that we discuss.”
“I have always kept animals in my classroom because we talk about various concepts in biology related to species survival and adaptations to particular environments,” Duncan said. “I have always found it helpful to have the animals in the room so that it can illustrate some of these sort of abstract concepts that we discuss.”
55 Louisiana Pine Snakes Released In Louisiana’s Kisatchie National Forest
Louisiana Pine Snake Listed As Threatened By USFWS
Louisiana Pine Snake Information
The Louisiana pine snake spends much of its life below the forest, underground. It feeds on pocket gophers, which are also underground dwellers. They can grow to around five feet in length and are black, brown and russet in coloration. The Louisiana pine snake is only found in pine forests of Louisiana, in four parishes of Louisiana and five counties in Texas. In 2018, Pituophis ruthveni was listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
