This family of snakes is composed of 2 genera and about 41 species occurring in the Americas, Africa and Asia. They can be found in arid areas to rainforest. Are known to occur in nests of ants. Contains the world smallest snake. They are very slender and wormlike; round in section. They have no teeth in the upper jaw; feed mostly on termites or ants, their larvae and pupae. Most species suck out the contents of insect bodies and discard the skin.
Like other blindsnake clades (Anomalepididae and Leptotyphlopidae), typhlopids are small (approximately 50–950 mm) secretive serpents with smooth, uniformly sized body scales (they lack the enlarged belly scales that characterize most other snakes), highly reduced eyes, a small and ventrally placed mouth, and a very short tail which bears a sharp terminal spine in most species.
However, the interrelationships among the three clades of blindsnakes remain poorly understood, and the monophyly of Scolecophidia has not yet been strongly corroborated by either morphological or molecular studies.
Although similar fontanelles are known in several Old World species of Leptotyphlopidae, they have not been noted previously in Typhlopidae.
Leptotyphlops dulcis is a member of Leptotyphlopidae, a clade of small, slender, fossorial snakes commonly known as slender blindsnakes, threadsnakes or wormsnakes.
All but one of the approximately 93 species of Leptotyphlopidae are contained within the genus Leptotyphlops.
Further studies on the ophidian cranial osteology: The skull of the Egyptian blind snake Leptotyphlops cairi (Family Leptotyphlopidae).
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