The elegant blind snake (''Afrotyphlops elegans''), also called the ''elegant worm snake'', 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.
[McDiarmid, Roy W., Jonathan A. Campbell, and T'Shaka A. Touré, 1999. ''Snake Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, vol. 1''] It was described by
Wilhelm Peters
Wilhelm Karl Hartwich (or Hartwig) Peters (22 April 1815 in Koldenbüttel – 20 April 1883) was a German natural history, naturalist and explorer.
He was assistant to the anatomist Johannes Peter Müller and later became curator of the Natural ...
in 1868. The species occurs on the island of
Príncipe
Príncipe is the smaller, northern major island of the country of São Tomé and Príncipe lying off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea. It has an area of (including offshore islets) and a population of 7,324 at the 2012 Census; in São Tomé and Príncipe.
References
Further reading
* Peters, 1868
''Über eine neue Nagergattung, Chiropodomys penicullatus, sowie über einige neue oder weniger bekannte Amphibien und Fische.''Monatsberichte der Königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin
elegans
Reptiles described in 1868
Endemic vertebrates of São Tomé and Príncipe
Fauna of Príncipe
Taxa named by Wilhelm Peters
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