A research team from the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Dresden and the Zoological State Collection in Munich has studied the occurrence of the Italian barred grass snake in Bavaria. Based on over 1000 samples, they show that the snake, which was only recently discovered in Germany, spread northward after the Ice Age. In the process, the snakes successfully crossed the Alps—which are usually considered as a pronounced natural barrier. They were only stopped when they encountered the related common grass snake in southern Bavaria. The study was published today in the Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research.