snake the wire

Wire is a kind of snake is the world's smallest snake. Scientific name is Ramphotyphlops braminus (Daudin, 1803). While their names in other languages ​​are common blindsnake, Brahminy blindsnake, Flowerpot Snake, snake bootlace (Eng.); wire snake, worm snake (Ind.), snake duwel (Jw.).
Identification

Wire-bodied snake is very small, seems to sparkle like a small black piece of wire. Body length of up to 175 mm, but rarely longer than 15 cm. Most in fact about 10 cm or less.

His body is black, blackish, brownish, or bluish gray. Generally darker on the dorsal (back) and younger at the ventral side (belly). His tail is very short and in the end there is a similar runcingan thorns. Sometimes both ends (head and tail) younger or whitish color.

His eyes were hidden and only visible as a faint dark spots on the scales behind the head. Therefore, known in English as a blind snake (snake blind). Scales that cover the midsection arranged in 20 rows, very smooth and shape similar course at the dorsal and ventral.
Habits and ecology

These snakes are very similar to worms, both body size and behavior. Often found under furniture, behind the plant pots and in the yard, under rocks and rotten wood, these snakes quickly flounder like a worm when disturbed. But if one looks closely, these snakes appear to have a shiny scales and skin is not slimy.

Wire snake like that in such places to look for prey in the form of eggs ants, termites and various other small insects. His mouth was so small, and only enough to swallow prey that is also very small. Therefore the existence of thought, people think that snakes wire including a very kind of venomous snakes and can kill humans is a myth is unfounded. These snakes are not even capable of biting people.

Snakes are thought to breed in parthenogenesis, ie the eggs develop into an individual snake without fertilized by the male snake. This theory has emerged because of all this snake specimens collected were identified with female sex (Tweedie, 1983). Other snakes are also a type known to have the ability parthenogenesis is a snake sack Papua (Acrochordus arafurae).

Habits of this snake that lives under the ground (fossorial), its size is very small, and the ability partenogenesisnya, making it easy to snake wires is widespread; population can be formed with only one specimen is carried in the ground snakes in potted plants.
Deployment

The spread of this snake is very broad: Africa (Zanzibar, Tanzania, Mozambique, Somalia, Cameroon, Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast). Madagascar, Comoro islands, Mascarenes, Seychelles, Mauritius, Reunion, Rodrigues.

Tropical Asia (Arabia, Persia, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Indochina, southern China, southern Japan, Hongkong, Taiwan, Philippines, Malay Peninsula, and islands in the Indian Ocean).

Pacific (Guam, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Hawaii), Mexico, Guatemala and West Indies.

In Indonesia snake wires spread across the archipelago.
Types that are related

There are some many other snake species from the genera Typhlops wire in western Indonesia, Cyclotyphlops in Sulawesi and Papua Acutotyphlops. Close relatives of snakes wire, namely Ramphotyphlops lineatus (Schlegel, 1839), has a body length of up to about 48 cm and spread from Thailand, Peninsular Malaya, Singapore, Sumatra, Nias, Borneo, Java, west and central.