Reptiles
Blind Snake
Typhlopidae · also called blind snakes, worm snakes, thread snakes
A blind snake is the snake most people have held without knowing it — because they thought it was a worm. Smooth, shiny, and often no longer than a shoelace, it lives underground, follows ant and termite trails to their nests, and eats the brood. One species has hitchhiked in plant pots to every warm corner of the planet, and it does not need a mate to do it.
Overview
Blind snakes are the family Typhlopidae and their close kin — more than 400 species of tiny burrowing snakes across the world’s warm regions. They have a cylindrical, even-width body, uniform scales, a blunt head with the mouth tucked underneath, and a spine-tipped tail, all of which make them look and move like earthworms. Their eyes are just dark spots under the head scales — enough to tell light from dark, which is all a life underground requires.
Diet and defence
They eat almost nothing but ant and termite eggs, larvae, and pupae, tracking the insects’ own pheromone trails to the nest and clearing the brood chamber. Threatened, a blind snake writhes, jabs with its tail spine, and smears foul cloacal fluid.
The flowerpot snake
The Brahminy blind snake is the most widespread land snake on Earth, carried worldwide in potted-plant soil. It is all-female and parthenogenetic — every individual clones itself — so one stray snake in a pot can found a whole population.
Status
Least Concern as a group — most species are widespread and tolerant of gardens and farmland. A few island or cave endemics are likely threatened, but the group’s hidden, ant-eating life keeps it well buffered.
Blind Snake: common questions
Is a blind snake a snake or a worm?
It is a true snake, despite looking exactly like an earthworm. It has scales, a backbone, a forked tongue, and the other features that define snakes, whereas an earthworm has a soft, ringed, segmented body and no bones. The quickest way to tell them apart is to look closely for the scales and the tiny flicking tongue, or to notice that a blind snake moves with a smooth gliding motion and is dry and shiny rather than moist. Blind snakes are also firmer to the touch and, if handled, may jab with the spine on the tail tip, which a worm cannot do.
Are blind snakes dangerous or venomous?
Not at all. Blind snakes have no venom, and their mouths are tiny, tucked under the snout, and built for scooping up soft insect eggs and grubs, so they cannot bite a person in any meaningful way. They are completely harmless. Their only defences are to squirm, to press the pointed tail tip against a predator, and to release a bad smell. In many places a blind snake found in a garden or house is doing free pest control by eating the brood of ants and termites, and the best response is to leave it alone or gently move it outside.
What is the flowerpot snake?
The flowerpot snake is the Brahminy blind snake, a small blind snake originally from southern Asia that has been spread around the globe in the soil of potted plants, hence the name. It is remarkable for two reasons. It is the most widely distributed land snake in the world, now found on every continent except Antarctica and on countless islands. And it is entirely female and reproduces by parthenogenesis, so each snake produces daughters that are clones of herself, which means one individual accidentally shipped in a plant pot can start a whole new population.
How do blind snakes find ant and termite nests?
They follow the insects' own chemical signals. Ants and termites lay down pheromone trails between the nest and food, and mark the nest itself with colony odours, and blind snakes have a well-developed sense of smell and taste, using the tongue and a sensory organ in the roof of the mouth to track these chemicals underground. Once inside the nest, the snake feeds on eggs and larvae, and some species can partly mask their own scent or produce secretions that stop the worker ants from swarming them while they raid.