Leptotyphlops humilis

Taxobox
name = "Leptotyphlops humilis"

---

image_width = 240px
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Chordata
subphylum = Vertebrata
classis = Reptilia
ordo = Squamata
subordo = Serpentes
familia = Leptotyphlopidae
genus = "Leptotyphlops"
species = "L. humilis"
binomial = "Leptotyphlops humilis"
binomial_authority = (Baird & Girard, 1853)
synonyms = * "Rena humilis" - Baird & Girard, 1853
* "Stenostoma humile" - Cope, 1875
* "Rena humilis" - Cope, 1887
* "Glauconia humilis" - Boulenger, 1893
* "Siagonodon humilis" - Van Denburgh, 1897
* "Leptotyphlops humilis" - Ruthven, 1907
* "L" ["eptotyphlops"] . "h" ["umilis"] . "humilis" - Klauber, 1931
* "Leptotyphlops humilis humilis" - H.M. Smith & Taylor, 1945
* "Leptotyphlops chumilis" - Rhodes, 1966McDiarmid RW, Campbell JA, Touré T. 1999. Snake Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, vol. 1. Herpetologists' League. 511 pp. ISBN 1-893777-00-6 (series). ISBN 1-893777-01-4 (volume).]

:"Common names: western slender blind snake, western threadsnake,ITIS|ID=174337|taxon="Leptotyphlops humilis"|year=2007|date=30 August] more.""Leptotyphlops humilis" is a blind snake species found in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Nine subspecies are currently recognized, including the nominate subspecies described here.

Description

This species, like many of the others in this 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.Arthur C. Hulse 1971. Fluoresence in "Leptotyphlops humilis" (Serpentes: Leptotyphlopidae). The Southwestern Naturalist. 16(1):123-124 doi:10.2307/3670106]

Common names

Western slender blind snake, western threadsnake, western blind snake.

Geographic range

Found in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. In the US it ranges from southwestern and Trans-Pecos Texas west through southern and central Arizona, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and southern California. In Mexico its distribution includes Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila, Tamaulipas and San Luis Potosí. The type locality given is "Valliecitas, Cal." The type locality was restricted by Kaluber (1931) to "vicinity of Vallecito, eastern San Diego County, California," and by Brattstrom (1953) to "the Uppers Sonoran Life Zone of the Vallecito area."

Habitat

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.

ubspecies

ee also

* List of leptotyphlopid species and subspecies.
*.
*.

References

External links

*