By Liz Kimbrough “I was making a joke and in my head I said, ‘I smell a threadsnake,'” Justin Springer, Caribbean program officer for the NGO Re:wild, recalled. “I just had a feeling, but I couldn’t be sure because we turned over a lot of rocks before that and we saw nothing.

Some scientists worried that maybe the Barbados threadsnake had become extinct before it was rediscovered in March.

The world's smallest snake has reemerged from hiding after nearly two decades. The Barbados threadsnake, which measures 3-4 inches long, was "lost" to science for about 20 years, as researchers had not made a verified sighting of the reptile since 2006.