Southern Blind Snake
Scales
Murray Mallee Region
Rough-nosed Blind Snake
S1, Whole
 
                      
Southern Blind Snake (Anilios bicolor)Class: Animals (Animalia) - Chordates (Chordata) - Reptiles (Reptilia)
Order: Scaled Reptiles (Squamata)
Family: Blind Snake (Serpentes: Typhlopidae)     iNaturalist Observation
Species: Southern Blind Snake (Anilios bicolor)
This Photo:     Ventral; Spine
Synonym: Ramphotyphlops bicolor
Other name: Dark-Spined Blind Snake

Thank you Bruce Edley for confirming the id of this species for us

General Species Information:
Found in the Murray Mallee SA, Riverland and possibly elsewhere
Daren found one of these at night on an expedition North of here, with a team of people helping with id's.
He came knocking at the caravan door looking for a container to put it in to identify it.
We weren't using a camera flash on this expidition, so got a strong light out to get some clear photo's. But it clearly agittated the snake, so didn't persist.
While much darker (ie black) than the reddish A. bituberculatus specimens we've seen, we have seen reddish A. bicolor photo's on-line, as such, this colour variation is not diagnostic.
The spine was very obvious and it seemed to try and bury it in a finger, which felt scratchy.
Shorter than the A. bituberculatus we've found at ~200mm long, making it look quite stubby/fat.

Copyright © 2019-2024 Brett & Marie Smith. All Rights Reserved. Photographed 15-Oct-2019
This species is classed as LC (Least Concern) in the Murray Mallee, SA, by DENR (Regional Species Status Assessments, July 2010)