#atractaspididae

[herpsandbirds]

Black-headed Centipede-Eater (Aparallactus capensis) EAT A TASTY CENTIPEDE!!!, family Atractaspididae, South Africa

Venomous.

Photograph by Johan Marais

aka Cape Centipede-Eater, South Africa

photograph by suncana

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

Do you want to share about the smaller snake families too? I'd love to hear about them

There's a lot of snake familes - twenty something, give or take, depending on who you ask - but I'll do my best to give you a brief rundown of the ones accepted as unique families by most herpetologists! Quite a few of the smaller families only have a couple or even a single member.

This is gonna be long, so I'm putting this under a read more! Click if you want to see a bunch of weird snakes I can guarantee most people have never even heard of.

We split snake families into two infraorders. First, the Alethinophidia, where most families go other than a few little weirdos we'll discuss later. Boas, pythons, vipers, elapids, and colubrids all go in here, too!

Aniliidae - the family of one little guy, Anilius scytale. It's an extremely primitive snake with smaller belly scales and a very rigid skull.

Acrochordidae - the wart snakes! This is the family of three weirdo aquatic snakes. They're primitive and have loose, baggy skin which they use to trap fish. Elaphant trunk snakes are the most well-known acrochordids.

Atractaspididae - my favorite lesser-known family, the mole vipers, also called stiletto snakes and burrowing asps! They're the last family (outside of vipers and elapids) who are always venomous, and they have totally unique fangs they can swing out to stick prey! They're a bigger family, with twelve genera.

Bolyeriidae - the Round Island boas! There are two, formerly placed in the boa family but seperated due to genetic research. They're pretty big burrowers and have adorable, long faces.

Cylindrophiidae - Asian pipe snakes. They're burrowing, highly secretive little snakes, and there are thirteen of them. They're weird in that they don't have well-developed ventral scales.

Anomochilidae - the three dwarf pipe snakes. They're highly fossorial and have stubby faces and bright-colored bands around their tails to trick predators into missing their heads.

Tropidophiidae - the dwarf boas. Fossorial snakes and another of the bigger families, with thirty-four species. They're little cuties, known for pronounced color changes caused by pigment drift - they're light-colored when they're active during the day and dark-colored when they're asleep at night.

Xenopeltidae - the sunbeam snakes. Beautiful, fossorial snakes. They have particularly rigid jaws.

Uropeltidae - the sheild-tailed snakes. These guys are highly fossorial and secretive to the point we just don't know jack about shit. Their weird flattened tails are bizarre and we don't know what is up with that really.

Loxocemidae - a family with a single species, the Mexican burrowing snake. Burrowers, they have a super cool feature - scent glands to keep away nuisance insects while they go about their business.

Pareidae - forty-two species of snail-eaters, they have asymettrical jaws and special teeth that allow them to scoop snails out of their shells!

Xenodermidae - the odd-scaled snakes. Their scales don't overlap, giving them a super unique appearance!

Prosymnidae - related to elapids but shown to be distinct through genetic tests. Insanely cute.

Psammophiidae - in the same boat as prosymnids. When they're venomous, they're typically rear-fanged venomous.

Lamprophiidae - a bigger one, with eighty-nine species! Diverse and related to elapids. African house snakes are here!

Xenophidiidae - spinejaw snakes. They're highly fossorial and have weird-ass skulls but we haven't even found a male specimen yet. Lots to learn about them!

And, now, the second infraorder - the Scolecophidia! These are the families of blind snakes and thread snakes. All of these snakes are typically less than one foot long and usually much smaller.

Typhlopidae - the biggest family of blind snakes, with over two hundred species! Their eyes are mostly vestigial but they have black spots that can detect light, and they have teeth in their upper jaw but their jaws cannot stretch.

Anomalepididae - super similar to typhlopids but they only have a single tooth.

Leptotyphlopidae - these tiny little guys eat termines and ants. They have no true teeth and immobile jaws. The smallest known snake, the Barbados threadsnake, belongs to this family.

If you made it this far, congrats! You now know more about snake families than most undergrad herpetology students.

[typhlonectes]

Newly Discovered:

A new stiletto snake (Lamprophiidae, Atractaspidinae, Atractaspis) from Liberia and Guinea, West Africa 

Mark-Oliver Rödel, Christoph Kucharzewski, Kristin Mahlow, Laurent Chirio, Olivier Pauwels, Piero Carlino, Gordon Sambolah, Julian Glos

We describe a new stiletto snake, Atractaspis, from western Liberia and southeastern Guinea. 

The stiletto snakes or burrowing asps, genus Atractaspis Smith, 1849, currently comprise 22 (Wallach et al. 2014), or 21 (Uetz et al. 2018) valid species. Most species are restricted to sub-Saharan Africa where they occur in a wide range of habitats from semi-deserts to rainforests (Spawls and Branch 1995); only two occur in the Middle East and Arabia (Wallach et al. 2014; Grossmann et al. 2018). These fossorial and venomous snakes are famous for their unique skull anatomy and venom delivery system, enabling them to use a single fang to bite, with closed mouth, in a lateral stabbing movement (Broadley 1990; Greene 1997; Cundall and Irish 2008; McDowell 2008). Various herpetologists have already been suffering from this behavior, making it impossible to hold the snakes in the usual way behind the head without being bitten (see Wagner et al. 2009). Their systematic position was matter of a constant debate and the snakes have been placed for instance within Viperidae, within Aparallactinae as subfamily of Colubridae, as a separate family Atractaspididae, and most recently as a subfamily Atractaspidinae within the Lamprophiidae (Broadley 1990; Vidal et al. 2007; Wallach et al. 2014; Uetz et al. 2018; Portillo et al. 2018)...

Read more: https://zse.pensoft.net/article/31488/

[herpsandbirds]

Spotted Harlequin Snake (Homoroselaps lacteus), yellow striped “Grassland Form”, family Atractaspididae, Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa

Venomous.

photograph by Dylan Leonard 

[herpsandbirds]

Spotted Harlequin Snake (Homoroselaps lacteus), "Grassland Form" family Atractaspididae, South Africa

Venomous.

photograph by Johan Marais

[herpsandbirds]

Spotted Harlequin Snake (Homoroselaps lacteus), family Atractaspididae, South Africa

Venomous.

photograph by Tyrone James Ping

[herpsandbirds]

Stiletto Snake (Atractaspis bibronii), family Atractaspididae, Mpumalanga, South Africa

Venomous.

Previously referred to as Bibron’s Mole Viper or Bibron’s Burrowing Asp.

This species is capable of easily sticking its fangs out the sides of its mouth.

photograph by Teddy Gilbert

[herpsandbirds]

Spotted Harlequin Snake (Homoroselaps lacteus), family Atractaspididae, Elandsbaai, South Africa.

Venomous - not dangerous

Photograph by Tyrone Ping

[herpsandbirds]

Reticulated Centipede Eater (Aparallactus lunulatus), family Atractaspididae, Soutpansberg, South Africa

Rear-fanged, mildly venomous.

photograph by Herp Nomad

[herpsandbirds]

Spotted Harlequin Snake (Homoroselaps lacteus), family Atractaspididae, Cape Town, South Africa

Venomous.

photograph by Tyrone James Ping

[herpsandbirds]

Stiletto Snake (Atractaspis bibronii), family Atractaspididae, Limpopo, South Africa

Venomous.

Previously referred to as Bibron's Mole Viper or Bibron's Burrowing Asp.

This species is capable of easily sticking its fangs out the sides of its mouth.

photograph by Tyrone Ping - Herpetofauna of Southern Africa

[herpsandbirds]

Trick or treat, smell my beak, give me tasty bug to eat!

Sincerely,

Totally NOT a bird

YOU LIKE A TASTY CENTIPEDES?!?!

Mediterranean Banded Centipede (Scolopendra cingulata), family Scolopendridae, Lebanon

Mildly venomous.

This species grows to a max length of up to 15 cm (5.9 in).

photograph by Rami Khashab

Ussuri Pit Viper (Gloydius ussuriensis), family Viperidae, and a��Chinese Red-headed Centipede (Scolopendra mutilans), family Scolopendridae, have a chance meeting on a mud flat on Jeju Island, South Korea

Venomous (both).

photograph by lhurteau

Black-headed Centipede-Eater (Aparallactus capensis) EAT A TASTY CENTIPEDE!!!, family Atractaspididae, South Africa

Venomous.

Photograph by Johan Marais

Saw-scaled Viper (Echis carinatus), EAT A TASTY CENTIPEDE!!!, Viperidae, India

Venomous. 

Photograph by Vivek Sharma

[herpsandbirds]

Hey, what are the best-named snakes? Also, this blog is incredible

Best Named Snakes:

Ok, so using different criteria for different names, here are some of the best off the top of my head...

Clouded Snail Sucker (Sibon nebulatus), family Colubridae, Chiapas, Mexico

photograph by Cristian Torica

Terrestrial Snail Sucker (Tropidodipsas sartorii), family Colubridae, Guatemala

Coral snake mimic (specifically, mimics Micrurus elegans).

photograph by Cristian Torica

Bandy-Bandy (Vermicella annulata), givin’ em the old razzle dazzle, family Elapidae, found throughout eastern and northern Australia

Venomous.

photograph by @nicvlattas

Black-headed Centipede-Eater (Aparallactus capensis) EAT A TASTY CENTIPEDE!!!, family Atractaspididae, South Africa

Venomous.

Photograph by Johan Marais

Sunbeam Snake (Xenopeltis unicolor), family Xenopeltidae, Thailand

photograph by Parinya Herp Pawangkhanant

DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE ANY GREAT SNAKE NAMES THEY'D LIKE TO ADD?

[herpsandbirds]

Spotted Harlequin Snake (Homoroselaps lacteus), family Atractaspididae, Western Cape, South Africa.

Venomous - not dangerous

Photograph by Chad Keates 

[herpsandbirds]

Bibron's Stiletto Snake (Atractaspis bibronii), family Atractaspididae, from Hoedspruit, Limpopo, South Africa

Venomous.

photograph by Johan Marais.