Blind Snake

Indotyphlops braminus, commonly known as the Brahman Blind Snake, slender blind snake, or island blind snake. Slender blind snake is a non-poisonous blind snake, distributed mainly in Africa and Asia, but has been introduced to many other parts of the world. They are completely burrowing animals with similar habits and appearance to earthworms. They are often mistaken for earthworms, although careful inspection will reveal tiny scales rather than actual segments of earthworm rings. This species is parthenogenetic and all known specimens are female. The specific name is the Latinized form of the word Brahman. No subspecies are currently recognized. We will further learn more about the different types of blind worm snake and other types of blind snakes.

About Snakes

Many types of snakes have more articulated skulls than their lizard ancestors, which allows them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with highly flexible jaws. In order to adapt to their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs such as kidneys appear to face each other rather than aligning side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pair of residual claw pelvic girdles on each side of the cloaca. Lizards independently developed slender limbless or severely limbed bodies about 25 times through convergent evolution, leading to many pedigrees of limbless lizards. These are similar to snakes, but several common legless lizards have eyelids and outer ears, while snakes do not, although this rule is not universal. Blind snake lifespan is usually 2-3 years.

Description of Thin Blind Snake

The adult is 2-4 inches long and rarely grows to 6 inches, making it the smallest known snake species. The surfaces of the head and tail are similar because the head and neck are blurred. Unlike other snakes, the scales on the head are similar to the scales on the body. The eyes are almost unrecognizable because there are small spots under the scales on the head. There is a small spike at the tip of the tail. There are fourteen rows of dorsal scales along the body. The coloration varies between charcoal gray, silver-gray, light yellow-beige, purple or rare albino, and the ventral surface is paler. The color of the larvae is similar to that of the adults. Behaviors range from sleepy to energetic, quickly searching for dirt or fallen leaves to avoid light. The small eyes are covered in translucent scales, making these snakes almost completely blind. The eye cannot form an image, but it can still register the intensity of light.

Places They Are Found

Slender blind snakes may be originally from Africa and Asia. It is an introduced species in many parts of the world, including Australia, America, and Oceania. It is now common as an introduced species in most parts of Florida. It is distributed vertically from sea level to 1200 meters in Sri Lanka and 1500 m in Guatemala. These snakes are also reported from Visakhapatnam. This is also the only snake reported from the Lakshadweep islands. In Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Senegal, Benin, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa these snakes are also found. In Asia, they are found in the Arabian Peninsula, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, Nepal, Mainland India, Maldives, Lakshawi, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh, Andaman Islands, Nicobar Islands, Myanmar, Singapore, Malay Peninsula., Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Hainan, South China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and Miyako Island. In the sea of ​​Southeast Asia, occurred on Sumatra and nearby islands such as Borneo, Sulawesi, Philippines, Budong, Salah, Ternate, Halmahera, Bleu, Selam, Ambon, Sapa Rua, Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Madura, Flores, Lombard, Sumba, Timor, East Timor, Kay Island, Aru Islands, New Guinea, New Britain, and Bougainville.

Habitat and Reproduction

Thin blind snake is usually found in urban and agricultural areas. These blind snakes live in underground ant and termite nests. They also exist in moist forests, dry forests, abandoned buildings, and even logs, wet leaves, stones, and humus in urban gardens. The distribution and living conditions of this group of blind snakes directly reflect soil moisture and temperature. This species is parthenogenetic and all the specimens collected so far are female. They lay eggs or can give birth to live young. There are up to eight offspring: all female, all diploid organisms with the same genes. Due to its obligate parthenogenesis, it was proposed to transfer the species to a new genus, such as Virgo Typhlops braminus.

Western Blind Snake

Rena humilis, commonly known as western blind snake, western thin blind snake, or western thread snake. Western blind snake is a kind of snake family. This species is endemic to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Six subspecies have been identified, including the designated subspecies described here. Rena humilis, like most species in the Leptotyphlopidae family, resembles a long earthworm. Living in underground caves, because they have no eyesight, their eyes are mostly wreckage. The western blind snake is pink, purple, or silver-brown, shiny, worm-like, cylindrical, blunt at both ends, with black eyespots, which can detect light. The skull is thick and can be dug, and there is a thorn at the end of the tail that serves as a lever. Its total length (including tail) is usually less than 12 inches. Rena humilis is found in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. In the United States, it extends from southwestern Texas and western TransPecos to southern and central Arizona, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah, and southern California. In Mexico, its distribution includes the states of Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila, Tamaulipas and San Luis Potosí.

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Figure: Western blind snake 

The Evolution of Snakes

The fossil record of snakes is relatively poor, because snake bones are usually small and fragile, making fossils rare. Fossils that are easily identified as snakes (although the hind limbs are often preserved) first appeared in the fossil record from the Cretaceous period. The earliest known fossils of true snakes are of sea snakes, the oldest of which is Haasiophis terra sanctus in the Upper Cretaceous era dating from 112 to 94 million years ago. According to comparative anatomy, people agree that snakes are descendants of lizards. Pythons, and other primitive groups in modern snakes, have remnant hind limbs that are tiny claw-shaped fingers called anal spines, used in Leptotyphlopidae and the family Typhlopidae also have remnants of the pelvic girdle, which appear as horny bumps when visible.

Snake Skin

Snake skin is covered with scales. Contrary to popular belief that snakes are slimy, snake skin has a smooth, dry texture. Most snakes use specialized abdominal scales for walking, allowing them to latch onto the surface. The body scales can be smooth, keel-shaped, or grainy. The eyelids of a snake are transparent "spectacles" scales, also called brille, which are permanently closed. The shedding of scales is called molting (or shedding or shedding during normal use). The snake shed the entire outer layer of skin. Snake scales are not discrete, but extensions of the epidermis; therefore, they do not fall off individually, but as a complete outer layer during each fall-off, similar to an upside-down sock. Snakes have a variety of skin coloring patterns, which are usually related to behavior, such as the tendency to escape from predators. Snakes with a high risk of predation tend to have smooth or longitudinal stripes, providing few reference points for predators, allowing the snake to escape without being noticed. Simple snakes usually adopt active hunting strategies because their mode allows them to send very little movement information to their prey. Spotted snakes usually use ambush-based strategies, probably because this helps them blend into the environment with irregularly shaped objects such as sticks or rocks. The spot pattern can also help the snake blend into the environment.

Snake Skeleton

The skeleton of most snakes consists only of the skull, hyoid bone, spine, and ribs, although the hen ophidian snake retains the remains of the pelvis and hind limbs. The skull is composed of a strong and complete nerve skull. Many other bones are loosely attached to the nerve skull, especially the highly mobile bones of the jaw bone, which are convenient for handling and ingesting large prey. The left and right sides of the mandible are connected to each other only by the front elastic ligaments, making them far apart, and the rear end of the mandible is connected to the square bone, allowing greater mobility. Jawbones and square bones can receive vibrations from the earth. This is because the sides of the lower jaw can move independently of each other, snakes that place their lower jaws on the surface have sensitive stereoscopic auditory perception and are used to detect the position of prey. Although there is neither an external ear nor an impedance matching mechanism (that is provided by the ossicles of other vertebrates to receive vibrations from the air, the mandible-square-stirrup pathway can detect angstrom-scale vibrations. The hyoid bone is a small bone located in the posterior and ventral part of the skull, located in the "neck" area. Like all other quadrupeds, it is an appendage of the tongue muscles of snakes.

Internal Organs of Snakes

Snakes and other reptiles have a three-chambered heart, which controls the circulatory system through the left and right atria and a ventricle. Internally, the ventricle divides into three interconnected chambers that are the arterial cavity, the pulmonary cavity, and the venous cavity. The venous cavity receives deoxygenated blood from the right atrium and the arterial cavity receives oxygenated blood from the left atrium. Below the venous cavity is the pulmonary venous cavity, which pumps blood to the lungs. The snake's heart is wrapped in a sac called the pericardium, located at the bifurcation of the bronchi. Since there is no diaphragm, the heart can move; This adjustment can protect the heart from possible damage when large amounts of ingested prey pass through the esophagus. The spleen attaches itself to the gallbladder and pancreas and filters the blood. The thymus is located in the fatty tissue above the heart and is responsible for generating immune cells in the blood. The cardiovascular system of snakes is unique in that there is a renal hilar system in which the blood from the snake's tail passes through the kidneys before returning to the heart.

Snake Reproduction

Although snakes reproduce in many ways, they all use internal fertilization. This is done with paired and forked half penises, which are stored and placed face down on the male's tail. The penis is usually grooved, hooked, or spiny, designed to support the wall of the female cloaca. Most types of snakes lay eggs and they are discarded shortly after they lay their eggs. However, some species such as the king cobra build nests after hatching and remain close to the young. Most pythons wrap themselves around their egg hooks and remain with them until they hatch. Female pythons do not lay their eggs, except occasionally in the sun or when drinking water.  Certain types of snakes are ovoviviparous and keep their eggs in their bodies until they are almost ready to hatch. Several types of snakes, such as pythons and green pythons, are completely viviparous, feeding their cubs through the placenta and the yolk sac, this is very unusual among reptiles, and requiem sharks generally suck. or the placenta found in animals. Egg preservation and live births are more frequently associated with colder environments. 

The Origin of the Scolecophidians Blind Snake

The origin of this blind snake is believed to have originated in Gondwana. In West Gondwana (South America and Africa), abnormal snakes and fine nematodes have evolved, and in eastern Gondwana, zebra insects, gerrhopilids, and zombies have evolved. Originally in the Mesozoic Era in the combined land of India / Madagascar. Typhoid animals later spread to Africa and Eurasia. Typhoid animals in South America appear to have evolved from African typhoid animals that crossed the Atlantic approximately 60 million years ago. In turn, they dispersed throughout the Caribbean about 33 million years ago. Similarly, about 28 million years ago, typhoid animals appeared to come to Australia from Southeast Asia or Indonesia.

The Appearance of the Blind Snake

The common name of the southern blind snake is a blind snake, which is based on its common feature, which is that the eyes are squinted under the scales of the head. These head scales are found in all snakes and are called spectacles, but in this lower layer, they are opaque, resulting in decreased vision. The decline in Scolecophidia eyes is attributed to the evolutionary origin of snakes. Snakes are supposed to originate from fossil ancestors, leading to the loss of genes related to vision. Later, due to convergent evolution, they evolved to resemble other vertebrates in taller snakes. Other common features include a missing left fallopian tube in four of the five families, except for the Anomalopidae family, which has a well-developed but diminished left fallopian tube. In addition, the length of these snakes ranges from 10 to 100 centimeters. Their typical body shapes include elongated cylinders and small, narrow heads. All of these families lack either the left lung or the left lung and lack intracranial infrared receptors.

The behavior of the Blind Snake

The main common characteristic found in all Scolecophidia is the fossil nature, which lives underground or lives in logs and fallen leaves. Furthermore, until now, the reproduction of all Scolecophidia has not been fully studied. All Solecophidia studied so far are considered oviparous. Elongated eggs are found in both leptotiflopids and typhlopids. Foraging behavior varies from family to family, but all feed on invertebrates. Some of their main food sources include ants or termite eggs, which are crawled by following the chemical signals left by these invertebrates to create trails. Tricheilostomata macrolepis has been seen climbing a tree and shaking its head vertically to detect chemical signals in the air to locate insect nests. In the study of Leptotyphlopidae, it was found that some species specialize in eating termites or ants, some depend on binge eating patterns, while others do not. Although these snakes are often difficult to find due to their digging habits, they appear more frequently on the ground after rain due to flooding in the cave.

Afrotyphlops Schlegelii

Afrotyphlops schlegelii, commonly known as Schlegel’s beaked blind snake or Schlegel’s giant blind snake, is a snake of the Cantharidae family. This species is endemic to eastern and southern Africa and is the largest typhoid animal in the world. It is the common blind snake species. It is harmless to humans and only feeds on termites. It is oviparous. A female generally lays 1,240 eggs, but very large individuals can lay up to 60 eggs. The different types of color patterns are seen on this snake that is uniform, spots, or streaks. Uniform specimens are black to brown on the back and straw-colored on the abdomen. Individuals in the spotting stage have irregular black to dark brown spots on the back, greenish-yellow to yellow on the abdomen and sides. The fringe phase is due to the black borders on each scale. These black lines merge with age. The maximum muzzle length recorded is 95 cm Scales are arranged in 3044 rows around the body. The vertebral body has more than 300 scales. The muzzle is very prominent, with a sharp horizontal cutting edge and the nostrils below it. The beak is very large, extending all the way to the eyes. The part of the beak visible from below is wider than its length. There are four lipsticks on it. The nose is half-life, and the suture comes from the first upper lip. There is an anterior eye, narrower than the nose or eyes, and is in contact with the second and third upper lip. The unique eye is located under the suture between the anterior eye and the eye. The diameter of the body ranges from 25 to 30 times the total length. The tail is wider than the length, with spines at the end.

Slender Blind Snakes

These relatively small snakes rarely exceed 30 centimeters in length, only Trilepida macrolepis and Leptotyphlops occidentalis grow. The skull and upper jaw are immobile, and the upper jaw has no teeth. The mandible is composed of longer square bones, tiny composite bones, and relatively large dental bones. The body is cylindrical, with a blunt head and a short tail. The scales are highly polished. The pheromone they produce can protect them from termites.

Geographic Distribution

These snakes are found in Africa, western Asia from Turkey to eastern India, the island of Socotra, and from the southwestern United States through Mexico and Central America to South America, but not in the highlands of the Andes. In the South American Pacific, they are found as far south as the southern coast of Peru and as far as Uruguay and Argentina on the Atlantic side. In the Caribbean, they are located in the Bahamas, Hispaniola, and the Lesser Antilles. They occur in various habitats, from arid regions to rainforests, and are known to appear near ant and termite nests. Its food mainly includes termites or ant larvae, pupae, and adults. Most species suck the contents of the insect's body and discard the exoskeleton. They are single oviparous snakes.