Typhlopsgiant, by Brian Crnobrna (FFT Herpetofauna team coordinator)

A dual sighting.

There are some transects that are totally boring when you don’t find anything. On most transects you find a few common species and move on to the next. Then there are transects when you see truly unique and amazing animals. Still other transects are plagued with so many little problems that it threatens to derail the whole process. This transects was a mixture of the last two.

It started off with a couple normal observations for the plot: our control area at the Tambopata Research Center. The mosquitoes where bad enough that I actually put on the leather gloves I carry around to protect against the toothy bites of boas. (the mosies don’t stand a chance!) Then we were confounded by escaping specimens. I picked up some eye-shine off deep in the woods. My assistant Michael and I spent about ten minutes locating the shine, then following its source, then relocating the eyes only to get lost again – all to no avail. At this point we were nearing the end of the transect and I just wanted to finish it off and move on.

Within the last five meters of transect Michael took the lead ahead of me. We approached a large buttressed tree that marked the end of the line. Michael disappeared around the side of the buttress. In a low whispered tone he said, “giant armadillo.” At this point I’m happy because we get a chance to view one of the most elusive of the charismatic mega-vertebrates in the forest, but its worth noting that even at that point we had not finished the transect – we still had a couple meters left to go.

I make my way towards the beast that Michael has spotted digging out its burrow just off our plot. As I slowly tip-toe past the buttress trying not to make any noise, I see out of the corner of my eye some movement inside the buttress itself – something squirming out of the matrix of duff underneath the entire structure. On instinct I reach in and grab the snake-like creature – lucky I had my gloves on; it was amongst a mess of ants in a nest. Pulling out the specimen I lost all track of the previous events and simply yelled, “what is it!” This must have been quite the annoyance to Michael, who was whole-heartedly stuck into sneaking up on a wild giant armadillo.

Still, I somehow convinced him that it was a reptile or amphibian of some kind, and he joined me in rejoicing on the capture: a rare and secretive blind snake of the genus Typhlops. These guys have no external eyes and spend almost all of their time underground where they devour unwitting ants and termites. On the rare occasions when they venture above ground they are rather clumsy and confusing to would be predators, who they will aggressively stab with the pointed tip of their tails. What would have driven this individual to the surface in this instance may have been the giant clawed behemoth which we had previously sighted, for despite all our herpetologist’s revelry in capturing one of the elusive subterranean species of the Amazon, the giant armadillo carried on with its business digging at the base of the same tree less than five meters away from us.