Elusive creature found trying to enter house in Honduras. It’s a new species
Outside a home in Honduras, an elusive creature maneuvered through freshly dug dirt. Its cryptic lifestyle and camouflaged coloring likely helped it go unnoticed.
But when scientists finally found the scaly animal, it turned out to be a new species.
Researchers were visiting El Pino village in 2019 when “by chance” they noticed a snake “attempting to enter a dwelling house,” according to a study published Dec. 2 in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa. The reptile was likely attracted to the building “due to digging for the passage of (a) water pipe.”
Intrigued, researchers took a closer look at the snake and soon realized they’d discovered a new species: Liotyphlops pino, or the El Pino blindsnake.
The El Pino blindsnake can reach about 8 inches in length, the study said. It has small eyes and a pale band, or “collar,” around its neck.
A photo shows the uniformly “dark brown” coloring of the new species. Overall, the snake looks like a worm.
Generally, blindsnakes are a “very poorly known” group of snakes rarely seen in the wild, the study said. They have “strictly fossorial habits,” meaning they’re burrowing and dirt-dwelling animals.
The El Pino blindsnake was found in a lowland forest habitat and on a property previously used for cultivating citrus trees, researchers said.
The new species is the first record of a Liotyphlops blindsnake in Honduras. Previously, the northernmost sighting of these blindsnakes was roughly 600 miles southeast in “extreme southwestern Costa Rica,” the study said.
Researchers said they named the new species after El Pino village where it was discovered and, so far, the only place it has been found. The name also honors the area’s inhabitants “who have been supporting research projects for more than a decade and carrying out environmental education.”
El Pino is within the Pico Bonito National Park and along the northern coast of Honduras, a central American country bordering Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The new species was identified by its location, scale arrangement, head shape and other subtle physical features, the study said. Researchers did not provide a DNA analysis of the new species due to a lack of genetic data for other blindsnake species.
The research team included Cristopher A. Antúnez-Fonseca, Josue Ramos-Galdamez, José Mario Solís, Juan Diaz-Ricaurte and Larry David Wilson.
This story was originally published December 11, 2024 at 10:27 AM with the headline "Elusive creature found trying to enter house in Honduras. It’s a new species."
