Extinct Blind Snake Found
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 13th, 2007
What’s pink, ten inches long and as thick as a pencil?
That’s right, the newly rediscovered species above that was thought to be extinct.
A blind snake that looks like a thin, pink worm has been rediscovered in Madagascar 100 years years after it was last found. The Xenotyphlops mocquardi snake was only known from two other specimens found in 1905.
For more information, read a dispatch from China, here.
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Fantastic find!
Those absolutely tiny (and usually blind) snakes totally fascinate me - how can something so worm-like actually be reptilian?
It’s like lancelets with fish.
Wow!
What’s next?
Here’s my question; are they truly blind (without eyes) or are the eyes hidden under transluscent scales?
There is a Texas blind snake and other “worm snake” species here in the Southeast that seem blind or eyeless but in fact the eyes are under their scales, which limits their “seeing” to light and dark or differing shades and shadows.
‘Scuse my ignorance, but I have always wondered this. What is the advantage of evolving such long thin bodies in these types of snake?
This animals borrows in the ground, similar to earthworms. Some of them exlusively feed on ants which they catch in their own nests, so they have to be very thin to move in this tunnels.
Yeah, Sordes is right, sausage. Look at most animals that fulfill this niche and you will see that many of them have developed to be long and thin like this. Even mammals that burrow tend to be somewhat long and thin. It is an advantageous trait for burrowing because it requires less energy to dig and fit within the tunnels.
When I first heard of this several days ago they said that the snake was never declared extinct, it just hadn’t been found again. Great little find though, the entire family of these snakes and their close cousins are fascinating to a herper.