I noticed it on a warm, humid night in Malaysia, shortly after a rainstorm. For some reason, a thin noodle that looked like part of a plant root or stem caught my eye.
Then, a tiny tongue flickered from one end. After stooping to satisfy my curiosity, I curled my fingers around one of the smallest snakes in the world, the Brahminy blind snake – and I had been so close to overlooking it.
Brahminy blind snakes are also called ‘flowerpot snakes’ due to their habit of hitching a ride in flowerpots with the plant trade.
How big are Brahminy blind snakes?
Few folk are even aware of their existence due to their secretive nature and minuscule size – they reach a maximum length of just 10.4cm.
What do Brahminy blind snakes look like?
Their strange worm-like appearance is partly due to adaptations for a life spent beneath the soil’s surface. Being so small helps them slink through the tiniest of spaces, and smooth scales give them a high-gloss, non-stick finish to move around unhindered.
Do Brahminy blind snakes have eyes?
Sight is rarely the primary sense for snakes but, as their name suggests, for blind snakes it is pretty much irrelevant as their eyes are almost non-existent. Reduced to a pair of tiny black dots sunk deep into their heads and totally covered by translucent scales, they are at best capable of light detection – enough to tell them whether they’re exposed on the surface of the soil or not.
As far as other facial features go, a small, underslung and recessed mouth that sits beneath the head is another fossorial adaptation that leaves the ‘snout’ unhampered to push through the soil. They have few teeth and lack the flexible ligaments in their jaw and skull possessed by most other snakes, meaning that they can only tackle prey no larger than their heads.
What do Brahminy blind snakes eat?
This is no matter, though. As the only insectivorous snakes, they can exploit this plentiful resource, especially ants and termites, which are abundant in the warm soils through which they mooch.
While the brahminy blind snake doesn’t initially appear to be as highly aware and effective a predator as its larger, more evolved cousins, watching it grab and swallow ant larvae and pupae one by one will leave you in no doubt of its ruthless predatory credentials.
Each insect is snatched deftly by the mouth, then the snake slowly works its prey through its digestive system with a strange, side-to-side motion. It can even make itself comfortably at home inside ant and termite nests, where its unpleasant glandular secretions are supposed to make it immune to attack.
I suspect that its smooth and glossy body doesn’t give the insects much to grab hold of, either.
How do Brahminy blind snakes reproduce?
While this is all pretty odd, how they look and feed isn’t the weirdest thing about these blind snakes – the way they reproduce takes their weirdness to a totally different level. They lay massive eggs, each about 1.5cm long. This may not sound like much, but when you’re only about 10cm long, that is a considerable relative investment – especially since there are probably more than three eggs in a clutch!
It becomes stranger still when you learn that all hatchlings will be female; there are no males. To date, every single brahminy blind snake is female. It is the world’s only unisexual snake and can reproduce rapidly.
Where so Brahminy blind snakes live?
This, and their ability to fit neatly into small spaces, such as plant pots, means Brahminy blind snakes have travelled the world with us and rather effectively colonised more than 40 known countries outside of their native range in South-East Asia. In fact, they are so good at travelling, it is possible that there is one lurking undiscovered in a plant pot or greenhouse near you!
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