Sina Global Geography, February 23 message in Beijing time, according to the U.S. National Geographic website reported that caecilians, also called "naked blind snakes", are unfamiliar amphibians resembling earthworms to the general public. Recently, a group of scientists discovered several new species of these animals in India and expressed concerns about the survival environment of these creatures after investigation.
This is not a bug or a snake. This is an earth-burrowing, limbless amphibian. And most importantly, scientists knew nothing about this creature before, making it a newly discovered species.
This strange animal was found in northeastern India, and in this photo, it is curled up protecting its eggs. This animal is one of six potentially new species of caecilians discovered in this study. Moreover, these newly discovered animals represent a whole new family, which is a level above "genus" and "species" in biological taxonomy. A paper on this discovery has been published in today's issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The animal is locally called "Chikilidae," where "Chikila" represents caecilian-like creatures in the local tribal dialect. According to the research team's report, its closest relatives live over 7000 miles (approximately 11,000 km) away in equatorial Africa.
Careful Nurture
In the laboratory of Sathyabhama Das Biju, an amphibian expert at Delhi University in India, this previously unknown caecilian-like animal is seen looking up from its eggs.
Biju and his team were amazed by this newly named species, "Chikila fulleri." The female will guard her developing offspring for as long as three months. Biju said: "The mother will protect her child for 95 days without eating during this period. The mother always stays with her child." Researchers pointed out that such maternal care is very rare among amphibians.
An Ancient Mysterious Branch
This is a 3D reconstructed image based on CT scan data of the head of this mysterious creature. Scientists can use this to identify its classification characteristics. The research team pointed out that subtle differences in the jaw, nose, and eye structure indicate that it is a new family, a descendant of an ancient evolutionary branch, whose closest relative lives in Africa. DNA analysis shows that around 140 million years ago, this population in India separated from other caecilian species.