The blackish blind snake (''Anilios nigrescens'') is a species of

snake Snakes are elongated, Limbless vertebrate, limbless, carnivore, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales. Ma ...

in the

Typhlopidae The Typhlopidae are a family of blind snakes. They are found mostly in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and all mainland Australia and various islands. The rostral scale overhangs the mouth to form a shovel-like burrowing str ...

family native to south-eastern

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

.McDiarmid RW, Campbell JA, Touré T. 1999. Snake Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, vol. 1. Herpetologists' League. 511 pp. (series). (volume).

Description

It is a small burrowing snake with small dark eyes, a forked tongue and smooth scale around its body which permits them to travel through soil. They can grow to a size of 23 inches, with the largest recorded at 32 inches. Colour is brown/purplish on top, with a light shade of pink on the belly. The tail features a pointed tip which is a harmless spur. They can be mistaken for

earthworms An earthworm is a terrestrial invertebrate that belongs to the phylum Annelida. They exhibit a tube-within-a-tube body plan; they are externally segmented with corresponding internal segmentation; and they usually have setae on all segments. Th ...

. Blind snakes move in a side-to-side motion on the ground, but underground they slither with tunnels made by insects.Blind Snake
by the Australian Museum

Diet

The species lives most of its life underground feeding on ants,

termites Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes (eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blattode ...

and their

larvae A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. The ...

. To find their food they flick their tongue to pick up the scent of an ant or termite trail and follow it back to the nest, where they rake the ants into their mouth using their upper jaw and swallow the food whole.

References

Anilios Reptiles described in 1845 Taxa named by John Edward Gray Snakes of Australia {{Scolecophidia-stub