Reptile versus reptile in Ibiza: a tortoise makes a meal of a horseshoe whip snake

Reptile eats reptile. A Sant Josep resident has filmed an unusual scene on his land: one of his tortoises feeding on a horseshoe whip snake, one of the invasive species causing the greatest concern in Ibiza because of its impact on the Ibiza wall lizard.

In the footage, the tortoise can be seen pulling at the snake’s body with its beak. However, the resident makes clear that the hunting credit does not belong to the tortoise. “Given the speed at which each of them moves, you can understand that it does not catch them. I give it the ones I catch myself”, he explains.

The resident says he captures the snakes using traps set up on his land and then places them in a sealed container before putting them in the freezer. “It seems to me a less cruel method than cutting off their heads or crushing them, as some people do. As they are cold-blooded animals, they fall asleep”, he says.

According to him, he has found numerous specimens on the property in recent times. “On one occasion, when moving some construction pallets, a huge snake appeared, as thick as my wrist, and it was also swollen as if it had eaten something large, although most of them are small”, he says.

Snake plague

The capture of horseshoe whip snakes is permitted on the islands as part of control measures for this invasive species, which threatens the Ibiza wall lizard, one of the most emblematic reptiles of Ibiza and Formentera.

The campaigns, coordinated by the Balearic Government’s Cofib, have distributed traps across Ibiza’s municipalities, although the spread of snakes across the island remains one of the main environmental concerns of recent years.