There are a few alternative theories to explore before we start panicking about a huge prehistoric snake living on Blind Frog Ranch.
In their quest to tack down the location of the rumored treasure buried on their Uintah Basin property, the Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch team has come across some pretty mind-bending theories.
In fact, the show’s most recent season saw the Blind Frog Ranch Head of Security, Charlie, investigate a rather strange dead deer with blue skin and some sort of tooth embedded in its neck.
Is there a Titanoboa living under Blind Frog Ranch?
By the time the Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch season three finale rolled around, the team – alongside their new biomedical expert, Emery Smith – had concluded that this tooth, along with further evidence extracted from the pond, and the mysterious photo that Charlie took, was proof-positive that there was some kind of prehistoric snake living in the caverns under Blind Frog Ranch.
However, before we jump into any kind of Jurassic World-esque scenarios, where we need to worry about the Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch possibly having to keep this prehistoric DNA out of the hands of nefarious forces – we believe that it is only fair to consider a possible, secondary explanation.
For a start, the Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch team neglected to clarify that the “over 3,000 different species” which their new biomedical expert had helped to identify, were of the extra-terrestrial variety.
And as a result, there are some doubts about whether the anomalies found in the DNA in this case can truly be classed as prehistoric (scientifically speaking).
And as compelling as it would be to believe that there is some Titanoboa-type creature lurking beneath the surface of Blind Frog Ranch, there is a good chance that the dead deer was simply the prey of some other, known, snake species.
Following the Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch prehistoric DNA storyline
If you want to recap everything that has happened on Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch, since Charlie accidentally stumbled upon the odd-looking deer that started it all, before we dive into the alternative theory – you will need to re-watch the following episodes of the show:
| Episode | Title | Initial air date |
| Season 3, episode 6 | “Back to the Energy Zone” | December 20, 2023 |
| Season 3, episode 7 | “Battle of the Black Rock” | December 27, 2023 |
A brief summary of Utah’s snake population
One of the biggest driving factors that fuelled the prehistoric snake theory among the members of the Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch crew is the fact that snakes cannot survive in Utah year-round as the area gets far too cold during winter.
According to Intermountain Health, there are about 31 different species of snakes that call Utah their home, including the Great Basin Rattlesnake (and many other rattlesnake species), the Rubber Boa, the Sonora Mountain Kingsnake, the Striped Whipsnake, and many more.
This abundance of snake life has even earned this region of the world the nickname if ‘Snake Country.’
And if we listen to what the snake experts at Wild Aware Utah have to say, most of these slithery guys simply “disappear” under rocks, in dens and in burrows once the winter cold sets in and they start to hibernate.
Can snakes in Utah really get that big?
Now, for an alternative theory to truly be plausible there needs to be evidence that regular old current-time snakes can get big enough to kill deer.
And while there is no one-size-fits-all description of exactly how big a snake needs to be for it to make a meal out of a deer, there certainly is potential for some pretty big snakes in Utah.
The Great Basin Gopher Snake is one of Utah’s largest snake species and can usually measure between four or four and a half feet in length (with some snakes stretching to about six feet).
And, this Facebook video from 2018 of the longest snake on display in Utah displays a reticulated python, which measures 17 and a half feet in length.
Other alternative theories
At the end of the day, even if you do not believe that any snake living in Utah could have possibly killed that deer that Charlie found, there are still dozens of alternative explanations to look into (which do not involve the discovery of a hereto-unknown prehistoric snake species.
For a start, the claim-jumpers that Duane, Chad and the team have been fretting about all season could easily have been the ones to kill the deer, or to cause those drag marks.
And Charlie’s photo is so unclear that the creature he saw could be anything from a beaver to a snake.
