#头条家时光 #
As the saying goes, "once bitten by a snake, ten years afraid of the well rope", it can be seen that human beings' impression of snakes is not good at all, and even some people feel fear, in the movie "The Scourge of the Wild Python", the python is a fatal threat to humans and can easily devour people. In real life, there are indeed a large number of giant pythons, such as reticulated pythons, forest pythons, etc. are very large.
But there are also very small snakes in nature, and their appearance and length are very similar to earthworms. Recently, British netizens asked for help on the Internet and found a mysterious snake with a colorful black body but a very small body. At first, netizens mistakenly thought it was a large earthworm, until they spit out letters to confirm that it was a snake.
The docile "blind snake"
Blind snake is one of the smallest and most widely distributed snakes in the continent and even the world, belonging to non-poisonous snakes, similar in appearance to earthworms, slightly larger than earthworms seen daily, therefore, the folk also call it "earthworm snake".
The body of the blind snake is very similar to that of earthworms, with vestigial eyes, cylindrical body, roughly black-brown or brown, no more than 20 cm long, and the thickness of both ends is very similar. The tail is short, but its body is covered with densely packed round scales, without the differentiation of ventral scales. It is reported that although the blind snake is very small, its body scales have 20 rows.
According to statistics, there are about 160 species of blind snakes in 3 genera around the world, distributed in warm zones and tropical regions such as Central and South America, southern Europe, Africa, and southern Asia.
The habitat of blind snakes is mainly hills and mountains, and their nests are mainly built in loose soil, because blind snakes are small in size, it is impossible to catch rodents, most blind snakes mainly prey on insects and other arthropods, they mainly feed on termites and ant eggs and larvae.
Although the body of the blind snake is very small and does not have the arms of a lizard, the blind snake has unique skills in the process of biological evolution, and the skull of the blind snake is very hard, which can facilitate the cave where the blind snake bowl fern is suitable for life. Blind snakes live underground for a long time, causing some organs of blind snakes to degenerate.
First, because the blind snake lives underground for a long time and does not get much oxygen for a long time, the respiratory organs of the blind snake are gradually degraded in the process of biological evolution. Not only that, the lungs of blind snakes have also undergone special evolution, different from other snakes, according to researchers' research, blind snakes' lungs do not have trachea, the heart is in the skull, and the blood in the body is loose to the right lung lobe.
Second, "blind snake" As the name suggests, the blind snake's eyesight is not good, living in the dark underground for a long time, and the role of the eyes is not large, so almost all blind snakes have no eyes, and the eyes have long been degraded.
How valuable is blind snake research?
Blind snakes as one of the most widely distributed creatures on the earth, but not many people have found the existence of blind snakes, mainly because most of the blind snakes live far from the ground, resulting in human research on blind snakes is very limited, and even scientists agree that blind snakes are very difficult to catch a living blind snake. Why is this the case?
Changes in the living environment lead to the death of blind snakes. Because the blind snake lives underground for a long time and cannot withstand external climate change, if it is forcibly dug out of the soil, the change in air pressure difference will cause the blind snake to die.
How valuable is the research value of blind snakes? Because blind snakes are very difficult to obtain, human research on blind snakes is very limited, and secondly, scientists' research on blind snakes is of great significance:
First, blind snakes belong to parthenogenesis, how the egg divides to form an embryo without the participation of sperm, and eventually develops into a young snake.
Second, the relationship between blind snakes and ecological environment soil, if the soil is polluted or the structure changes, blind snakes will die, how can humans determine this critical value and implement ecological environmental protection.
summary
Blind snake as the smallest snake in nature, its existence and evolution for human beings is of great significance, in order to better protect blind snakes, we should protect the soil, to avoid soil damage and pollution, resulting in the large-scale disappearance of blind snakes.