A RARE FIND: THE VARIABLE
QUILL-SNOUTED SNAKE
Snakes, lizards and gecko's are frequently found inhabiting old disused term ite mounds. Such mounds, w hich are com m only seen and very c h a ra c te ris tic of the Orange Free State landscape are b u ilt by the Snouted-harvester termite, Trinervitermes trinervoides.
Recently, w hile engaged in an ecological project on, and in search of the Lesser d w a rf shrew,
S uncus varilla (see Newsletter no. 29), a disused
term ite mound w a s excavated w h ich contained an u n fa m ilia r snake w h ich was subsequently identified by our herpetologist, M r J.H. van Wyk, as a Variable quill-snouted snake, Xenocalam us
bicolor bicolor.
Further investigation revealed that th is was indeed a remarkable find as this is only the second V a riable q u ill-s n o u te d snake ever collected so fa r south in Africa. The only other snake of th is kind was a single specimen collected fo rty-six years ago by Dr Hoffman, a form er director of the National Museum, Bloem fontein in approxim ately the same area, nam ely K e lly's V ie w in the d is tric t of Bloemfontein.
C .D . Lynch Up until 1971, authoritative scientific books considered the single specimen collected by Hoffman to be the only one of its kind ever found in Africa. It was only during 1971 that Dr Broadley of the The Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, concluded that the snake, know n th e n as H o ffm a n 's q u ill-s n o u te d snake,
Xenocalam us bicolor concavo-rostralis, w as
merely a variation of the quill-snouted snake,
Xenocalam us bicolor bicolor, w h ich are found
fu rth e r northw ards in Africa.
This burrow ing, nocturnal, sem i-poisonous snake, w ith the u n d ercut snou t closely resembling th a t of a q u ill pen and w h ich is confined to sandy terrain and eating b u rrow ing limbless reptiles therefore indeed proved to be a rare and interesting find, more so for a m a m m a lo g ist sea rch in g fo r Lesser d w a rf shrews. A lbeit that it is no longer only the second of its kind in the w orld, it remains the most southerly distributed Xenocalam us collected thus far. m
The rare Variable Q u ill-s n o u te d Snake. (Photo: j.h van w yto
