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Flowerpot snake Ramphytophlops braminus

Helenthereef

Helenthereef

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Moving a flowerpot in my yard in Fiji, and found, possibly predictably enough, a flowerpot snake Ramphytophlops braminus

These tiny guys look exactly like worms to the naked eye, but don't have a central "saddle" and move around in an unmistakably snake-like way instead of curling up into loops like an earthworm.

They are blind, but you can see vestigial eyes in the head shot, and for some reason I don't know, the tail ends in a tiny spike.

They eat ants and termites, so after the photo session I released him back into my garden.

My gardener still doesn't believe it's snake though.... :rolleyes:
 

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They sure do look like worms. We also have them here in Southern California, but they have only been introduced to a few areas so far. Here's one I found a few years ago.
2006_0506Ringneck0024-1.jpg
 
They really are a wide-spread species then! Yours looks exactly like the one we have here.

A couple of years ago we discovered a "giant" version, apparantly a new species, now being described. Looks very much the same, but the size of a ball point pen.
 
Wow, that is pretty big. We have a native blind snake here that's a little bigger than these ones but never the diameter of a ball point pen.
 
I had posted about this, but can no longer find the forum - there used to be a "scientific papers" one, but it seems to be gone. Wasn't exactly a dynamic turn-over sort of forum so maybe just rusted and fell off. If I can find the info I posted there I'll add it to this.
 
Helenthereef said:
I had posted about this, but can no longer find the forum - there used to be a "scientific papers" one, but it seems to be gone. Wasn't exactly a dynamic turn-over sort of forum so maybe just rusted and fell off. If I can find the info I posted there I'll add it to this.
Click to expand...

Can't find main info but here is link to the section of my blog where we posted one photo of this new species...

http://pacificboasnakes.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-snake-species-found-fiji-times.html
 
Wow, that's really cool. I think the most interesting part is that the natives already knew about it. Thanks for posting that. :thumbsup:
 
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