Amphisbaena alba

Red amphisbaenian ( amphisbaena alba)

The Red amphisbaenian ( amphisbaena alba ) is a living underground, legless lizard of the family of authentics amphisbaenians. Your home is the rain forests and savannas in Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, the three Guiana, Trinidad, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and northern Paraguay.

Features

It is, with a maximum length of 75 centimeters, the largest Doppelschleichenart. Males and females look alike. The body is stocky, the head width is up 2.1 inches. The top adult animals is dark reddish brown, the belly whitish. The number of annuli on the body is 198-248, tail 13-21. The total number of segments is 65-87.

Way of life

The Red amphisbaenian is the only Doppelschleichenart whose way of life was examined in a field study in the Brazilian Cerrado. It feeds on a variety of arthropods, especially spiders, ants, termites, beetles, and insect larvae. Sometimes it was in the buildings of ants, especially the leaf-cutting ants ( Atta ) found. The eggs are often hidden in the buildings of ants or termites. Unlike other amphisbaenians that have only small nest, hanging at the Red amphisbaenian eight to 16 eggs in a bundle.

Have Red amphisbaenians, like all species of the genus amphisbaena no particular grave technology, but pushing the earth only with shocks of the rounded head to the side.

Threatened she stretches her short, head-like, blunt tail into the air to distract from the correct head. The behavior has probably not developed because of the short tail, can be dropped as in the genuine lizards at predetermined breaking points and later regenerated.