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Squamata, Serpentes, Cylindrophiidae - Pipe Snakes |
| The Pipe Snakes of the family Cylindrophiidae are found in Tropical Asia. They range from Sri Lanka and Myanmar eastward into Indochina, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Currently there is a single genus (Cylindrophis) with at least 8 species. These snakes have also been considered members of the family Uropeltidae by some researchers. Pipe snakes are fossorial and aquatic, most reports on these snakes consider them burrowers, but at least one population in southern Thailand's Lake Songhkla appears to be very much tied to shallow water. Pipe snakes tend to feed on other snakes, and other vertebrate prey that have elongated bodies. They also have a defense behavior that involves hiding the head and waving a brightly colored, and flattened tail tip in the air. Presumably this distracts a predator away from its head. In most molecular studies that include cylindrophids, they turn up as the sister to the uropeltid (Shield Tailed Snakes) snakes of South Asia. It also appears the Pipe Snakes and the Shield Tail Snakes are the sister group to the boas and their realtives; but this does not included the pythons. Thus, boas and pythons are not each others closest relatives (Wilcox et al. 2002, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 25:361-371). |
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Common Asian Pipe Snake, Cylindrophis ruffus (Laurenti, 1768). All photographs are snakes from the Lake Songhkla area of southern Thailand. Adult snakes reach at least 900 mm in total length (they have very short tails). The common Asian Pipe snake gives birth to relatively large (200 mm) neonates, but many of the other species are poorly known and some may lay eggs. These photos show typical defense behavior and postures for Cylindrophis ruffus.
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| All text and photographs copyright © John C. Murphy. All rights reserved worldwide. The content of this site is made available for purposes of researching images offered for license by John C. Murphy. No image is to be copied, duplicated, modified or redistributed in whole or part without the prior written permission of JCM Natural History Photography. Email: jcm@jcmnaturalhistory.com |
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