Western blind snake
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| Leptotyphlops humilis (Girard & Baird, 1853) |
The western blind snake (Leptotyphlops humilis) is a member of the reptile family Leptotyphlopidae, which includes the blind snakes. They are sometimes known as the threadsnakes. This species, like many of the others in the family, resembles a long earthworm. It lives underground in burrows, and since it has no use for vision, its eyes are mostly vestigial. The western blind snake is pink, purple, or silvery-brown in color, shiny, wormlike, cylindrical and blunt at both ends, and has light-detecting black eyespots. The snake's skull is thick to permit burrowing, and it has a spine at the end of its tail that it uses for leverage. It is usually less than 30 cm in length, and is as thin as an earthworm. This species and other blind snakes are fluorescent under ultraviolet blacklights.
The snake lives underground, sometimes as deep as 20 meters, and is known to invade ant and termite nests. Its diet is made up mostly of insects and their larvae and eggs. It is found in deserts and scrub where the soil is loose enough to work, and it is distributed throughout the western United States and Mexico.
There are many subspecies of the western blind snake, including:
- Leptotyphlops humilis cahuilae - desert blind snake
- Leptotyphlops humilis humilis - southwestern blind snake
- Leptotyphlops humilis segregus - Trans-Pecos blind snake
- Leptotyphlops humilis utahensis - Utah blind snake
