They cannot bite and have limited defensive capabilities. These snakes are non-venomous and harmless.
Below the ground they use tunnels made by insects.īlind Snakes lay one to twenty round eggs each breeding season with the young looking after themselves.
Owls, feral cats, foxes and some snakes, especially the Bandy Bandy, eat Blind Snakes.īlind Snakes move in a side-to-side swimming motion when above the ground. They rake ants and termites into their mouth with their top jaw and swallow their food whole. They follow the ants' trails to the nest. To find their food Blind Snakes flick their tongue to taste and smell the trail of ants and termites. They also eat the eggs and larvae of ants and termites. They are found wherever ants and termites (their main food supply) are plentiful. Some have called it mutualism, which describes a situation where two species benefit each other, but given the fact that the snakes are still sometimes eaten by the owlets (and don't survive well once the nest is vacated), this might really by a commensal relationship, where one species reaps a benefit and the other does its best to deal with the situation.Blind Snakes live in south-eastern Australia. This is a remarkable case of symbiosis – a partnership between species. The snakes being brought to the nest alive wasn't simply an accident – they were acting as tiny, unwitting parenting aides! In the end, they found that baby birds living with blind snake roommates tended to grow faster and had better chances of survival. So was the presence of the snakes good for the growing chicks, the researchers wondered? It seemed possible that the reptiles were gobbling up potentially pesky bugs that might otherwise become parasites to the growing chicks, or contaminate their food.įor several weeks they watched, weighed and assessed the nestlings. It turns out the reptilian roomies weren't just surviving in their new digs – they were also finding food: critters like ants, termites or larvae, some of which likely hitchhiked in from the outside world on the momma owl. Close inspection revealed that nests with snakes in them had far fewer bugs. They found that while some of the blind snakes did get eaten by the owl chicks, most ended up burrowing into the debris at the bottom of the nest, where they would continue to live for days, out of sight – and beak – of the birds.īut there was more. Puzzled by the owls' snake-sparing behaviour, the scientists studied their nests for a period of time. Despite their name, they aren't completely blind, but it's pretty close – the snakes use their tongues and noses to track down tiny bugs, which they vacuum up with their bizarre forward-and-backward swinging jaws. They're typically less than 30cm (12 inches) long and spend most of their time burrowing through soil. Texas blind snakes (or thread snakes) could easily be mistaken for worms. Texas blind snakes are unwitting parenting aides.
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