Blind Snake

The infraorder name Scolecophidia derives from the two Ancient Greek words or σκώληκος (, genitive ), meaning "earthworm", and (), meaning "snake". It refers to their shape and fossorial lifestyle.

{|class="wikitable" border="1" !bgcolor="#f0f0f0"|Family |align="center"|2 |Indo-Malayan blind snakes |style="width:40%"| India, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and New Guinea |- |Leptotyphlopidae |Stejneger, 1892 |align="center"|13 |slender blind snakes or threadsnakes |Africa, western Asia, and the Americas |- |Typhlopidae |Merrem, 1820 |align="center"|18 |long-tailed blind snakes |Most tropical and many subtropical regions all over the world |- |Xenotyphlopidae |Vidal, Vences, Branch & Hedges, 2010 |align="center"|1 |Malagasy blind snakes |style="width:40%"| Madagascar |- |}

Despite only having fossils as early as the Cretaceous, Scolecophidia itself likely originated in the Middle Jurassic, with Anomalepididae, Leptotyphlopidae, and Typhlopoidea diverging from one another during the Late Jurassic. Within Typhlopoidea, Gerrhopilidae likely diverged from the Xenotyphlopidae-Typhlopidae clade during the Early Cretaceous, and Xenotyphlopidae and Typhlopidae likely diverged from one another during the Late Cretaceous. The Malagasy typhlopoids (Madatyphlops in Typhlopidae and Xenotyphlops in Xenotyphlopidae) are among the only extant terrestrial vertebrates on Madagascar whose isolation occurred due to vicariance from the Cretaceous breakup of Gondwana. The only other terrestrial vertebrate on Madagascar that shares this evolutionary history is the Madagascan big-headed turtle (Erymnochelys madagascariensis); all other Malagasy land vertebrates dispersed from the mainland to an already-isolated Madagascar from the latest Cretaceous to the present.

, the earliest known fossil blind snake]] The extinct fossil species Boipeba tayasuensis from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil was described in 2020, marking the earliest fossil record of Scolecophidia. It was a sister group to Typhlopoidea and was over 1 meter in length, making it much larger than most modern blindsnakes, with only Afrotyphlops schlegelii and Afrotyphlops mucruso rivaling it in size. Prior to this, the earliest scolecophidian fossils were only known from the Paleocene of Morocco and the Eocene of Europe. Possible Typhopid skin has been identified in Dominican amber.

This phylogeny combines the ones recovered by Vidal et al. in 2010 and Fachini et al. in 2020. Boipeba |label2=Typhlopoidea |2= }} }} }} }}|label1=Scolecophidia}}

The main shared characteristic found across all Scolecophidia is a fossorial nature, either living underground or within logs and leaf litter. Foraging behaviors vary across families, but all feed on invertebrates. Some of their main food sources include ant or termite eggs, which are tracked down by following chemical cues left by these invertebrates to create trails. Tricheilostomata macrolepis has been seen climbing up trees and waving its head side to side vertically to detect chemical cues in the air to locate insect nests. In a study on the Leptotyphlopidae, some species were found to specialize in eating only termites or ants; some rely on binge feeding patterns, while others do not. While these snakes are often difficult to locate due to their burrowing habits, they are more often seen above ground after rain due to flooding that occurs in burrows. The ancestral nature of the Scolecophidia has resulted in the use of these organisms as models for evolutionary studies in Serpentes to better understand evolution of reproduction, morphology, and feeding habits.