Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Two days ago I went out onto my back porch and to my surprise there was a Night Snake curled up by some paint cans. When I went to pick it up I noticed it had multiple spinal fractures. My big moose of a dog must have found it before I did and had been playing with it for a while (he doesn't know his own strength). Well I put it in a jar, but of course it died within the hour. Disappointed, I sought out to find another. I had never encountered a Night Snake before, and now that I knew that they lived around my area I went on a little expedition. Yesterday I actually found another in my front yard under an old railroad tie! I didn't want this one to suffer the same fate as the other, so I headed over to Petco and got the smallest green anole they had. Astonishingly, the lizard just walked all over the snake, so I am guessing it was too big. This brings me to my first question...What should I be feeding it. I saw one person on the forum fed his a baby mouse, but if a small anole is too big for mine i really doubt he would go for that.
Hypsiglena torquata

Then this morning I went out looking for something for my Night Snake to eat and amazingly I found a little Western Blind Snake under a rock! I had read about these guys and had always wanted to find one. Blind snakes are apparently common in most places, but in Tucson, Arizona I do not think they are. In my 11 years of living here and searching for various animals I had never encountered one, so this got me pretty excited. I collected a few little black ants from the nearby colony and put them in his cage, but he does not seem to show any interest in them. Could this just be shock or because it's daytime? Am I correct in the assumption he eats the ants and not just the larvae?
Any advice on the captive care of these neat little critters would be greatly appreciated. How much water they need? Should I dampen the worm snake's soil? What kind of soil should i use? What should I feed them? Heat rocks? Lighting?
Leptotyphlops humilis

lol, 2 and a half snakes.

The AZ night snakes will prey mainly on lizards and snakes. Give the snake a week or two to settle in, and then offer it the lizard again. Make sure you give it plenty of water. Temperatures around 75-83 degrees are preferred. Offer it food at night.

With the blind snake, they prey easily on termite larvae and ant larvae. I have kept brahminy blind snakes easily, using this...

Get a small enclosure, and a small bowl that will fit inside the enclosure and take up 3/4 of it. Cut 2 entry points on opposite sides of the bowl, on each side, about 2 inches long, by 1 inch high. Cut a hole in the lid as wide as a straw(a straw you would drink out of). Next, put about 2 inches of moist(not soaked)potting soil into the enclosure. Put the bowl in there as well. Now put the straw in the hole, and cover the rest of the bowl with soil.

Put the blind snake in, and leave it alone. About a week and a half after this, drop about 10-15 f/t ant larvaes into the bowl(drop them through the straw), and this will simulate how the blind snake would find the prey in the wild. It will crawl into the bowl through a entry point, find the larvae, and eat. Temperatures for a blind snake don't matter.

Good luck with them. And if you ever find a ringneck there, drop me an email.

Mike
Michael's Place

-----
Michael's Place has updated, better caresheets
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
Helmz777@aol.com
www.freewebs.com/mikesnake

Amazing blind snake!!!!!!! Neat little guys. I would love it if you could e-mail me some long-term records of anything interesting you might observe. The night snaks are amazing little nocturnal beasts. Mine easily took f/t, as well as live, minnows offered from forceps, then converting to pnkies off of fish scent. These guys relish fish. Have fun, and happy herping.

-----
DAVE

1.0 Western green toad
1.1 green treefrogs
1.0 Florida blue garter snake
1.1 Oriental fire-bellied toads
1.0 American bullfrog
0.1 Spanish ribbed newt
0.0.1 Eastern ribbon snake
1.1 red-cheeked mud turtles
0.1 Dubia day gecko
1.0 Sonoran gopher snake
0.1 rough green snakes
1.1 giant African black millipedes
1.0 Okeetee corn snake
0.1 Albino African clawed frog
1.0 Kenyan sand boa
0.0.1 Argentine flame-bellied toadlet
0.0.1 African bullfrog
1.0 yellow * Everglades rat snake intergrade
1.1 Western hognose snakes
1.2 fire salamanders
1.1 scarlet kingsnakes
0.0.1 Argentine horned frog
1.1 Southern ringneck snakes
0.0.2 Western hooknose snakes
0.0.1 Florida brown snake
0.1.1 Northern brown snakes
0.0.2 Western/ Midwestern worm snake intergrades

Well I was looking for stuff in my backyard again tonight and I came across yet another Night Snake! Does this mean that there was a nest nearby or something? I've never encountered more than one snake within the same month in my yard, let alone the same kind of snake 3 times in 2 days. It could just be because I have a myriad of geckos in my backyard. I saw 2 gravid mediterranean geckos tonight and around 5 other med. roaming around. There are probably about 5 or 6 tucson/texan geckos running around there to. I like watching my geckos.

I failed to catch the night snake though, he went into a crevice that was very small, but must have been really deep. I'll try and get him again later. If I do catch him, would it be wise to put the 2 snakes in the same enclosure? If I sexed them and they turned out to be both male I would think not, but what about if it's a male and a female or 2 females?

The snakes won't fight. No matter the gender.

Mike
Michael's Place

-----
Michael's Place has updated, better caresheets
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
Helmz777@aol.com
www.freewebs.com/mikesnake

Throw the night snake a lizard from your yard and you will have
better success than you are having with the exotic anole.
Night snakes can take down very large prey in proportion to
themselves. Adult females have been found with collared lizards
in them.

>>Well I was looking for stuff in my backyard again tonight and I came across yet another Night Snake! Does this mean that there was a nest nearby or something? I've never encountered more than one snake within the same month in my yard, let alone the same kind of snake 3 times in 2 days. It could just be because I have a myriad of geckos in my backyard. I saw 2 gravid mediterranean geckos tonight and around 5 other med. roaming around. There are probably about 5 or 6 tucson/texan geckos running around there to. I like watching my geckos.
>>
>>I failed to catch the night snake though, he went into a crevice that was very small, but must have been really deep. I'll try and get him again later. If I do catch him, would it be wise to put the 2 snakes in the same enclosure? If I sexed them and they turned out to be both male I would think not, but what about if it's a male and a female or 2 females?

Awsome, thanks for the quick responses! Only question i have now is where to get termite and ant larvae? Can you buy them or am i guna have to go digging?

Other than the fact that it is usually hot and dry, I am not keen on the climate of AZ. So I would assume you would have trouble finding the larvae. I found a ton of the stuff today. Under 1 rock I must have seen 100 larvae.

I usually lift rocks to find mine, and collect as many as I can at a time, throw it all into a jar, and freeze them.

I have no clue where you could buy some from.

Mike
Michael's Place

-----
Michael's Place has updated, better caresheets
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
Helmz777@aol.com
www.freewebs.com/mikesnake

It can take time for a snake to aclimate before it willing to feed in captivity. So, your food choice may not be wrong, just your timing. These snakes will eat very large prey in comparison to their size. I have seen them eat full grown green tree frogs. They will also eat rosy red minnows left flopping around infront of them, and other small snakes.

usually, preferring native lizards like Banded Geckos and Tree Lizards. Blind Snakes eat the larvae and eggs of ants, but not the adult ants. They can be kept for a while on live termites--they eat the termites' abdomens, breaking off the head by grabbing the termite from behind and rubbing it against the ground. One person I knew kept Blind Snakes for a while on a diet of tiny baby mealworms. A bit of moisture at one end of the Blind Snake's enclosure, and dry at the other end, to let it hydroregulate.

I had one in the eighties it ate brown anoles.