American blind snakes

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American blind snakes
Systematics
Superordinate : Scale lizards (Lepidosauria)
Order : Scale reptiles (Squamata)
without rank: Toxicofera
Subordination : Snakes (serpentes)
Superfamily : Blind snake-like (Typhlopoidea)
Family : American blind snakes
Scientific name
Anomalepididae
Taylor , 1939

The American blind snakes (Anomalepididae) are a family of snakes (Serpentes). These are mostly small worm-like snakes 15 to 30 centimeters long, which occur disjointly in southern (west of Colombia and Venezuela, Trinidad , Guiana , eastern Amazon basin, southern Brazil) and Central America (Costa Rica, Panama). About 20 species are known.

features

American blind snakes are relatively thin. Most adults are only 15 to 30 centimeters long, no species grows longer than 40 centimeters. The premaxillary is toothless, the longitudinally oriented maxillary is dentate. Each lower jaw bone (dental) has one to three teeth. Remnants of the pelvic bones can be found in the trunk muscles . The right lung is missing, a tracheal lung is present.

Way of life

American blind snakes live underground, usually near burrows of ants or termites . Details about their behavior are not known because of their hidden way of life. They probably feed mainly on soft invertebrates, especially larvae and eggs of ants and termites. All American blind snakes are oviparous with small clutches of 2 to 13 eggs.

Systematics

The American blind snakes formerly represented a single genus within the blind snakes (Typhlopidae) as anomalepis species , but were later placed in a family of their own and divided into several genera .

The family currently comprises 4 genera with a total of 18 species: (As of February 2016)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Laurie J. Vitt, Janalee P. Caldwell: Herpetology: An Introductory Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles. Academic Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0123869197 , p. 603.
  2. ↑ Anomalepididae in The Reptile Database ; accessed on February 10, 2016.

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