Early Blind Snakes: Anomalepididae

At least two species eat ant eggs, as well as ant larvae (LAR-vee) and pupae (PEW-pee), which are the life stages between the egg and the adult ant. Scientists suspect that other early blind snakes also eat ants and possibly other insects, but they have not studied them in enough detail to say for sure.

Early blind snakes and people rarely encounter one another.

These species are not listed as endangered or threatened. Like many other species that live much of their lives underground, however, scientists have little information about their numbers in the wild. In fact, scientists know about six of the sixteen species only from a few individuals caught in the area where the first ones were found, and they have not seen one species, the South American blind snake (Anomalepis aspinosus), since 1916.