Harmless · Native to the United States and Mexico

Texas blind snake

Rena dulcis (Baird & Girard, 1853)

Also called Texas threadsnake, plains threadsnake, Texas blindsnake
Data updated October 2026

Thin, shiny pinkish-tan Texas blind snake on bare soil, looking like an earthworm
Fig. 1 — Adult on soil. At first glance it is easy to mistake for a shiny earthworm.
Close view of a Texas blind snake's blunt head with tiny dark eye spots
Fig. 2 — The eyes are reduced to tiny dark spots under the head scales.

At a glance

A worm-sized, pinkish burrowing snake of Texas, Oklahoma, southern Kansas and northern Mexico. It lives underground in ant and termite tunnels, eating their young, and surfaces mostly after rain at night. Its mouth is too small to bite people.

01

Identification

The Texas blind snake is slender, smooth and shiny, and is usually a uniform pinkish tan, reddish brown or pink, though some are gray or medium brown. The head and tail are both blunt, so it can be hard to tell which end is which. Unlike most snakes it has no wide belly plates: the scales underneath are the same size as those on the back. It is not fully blind; the tiny eyes show as dark dots and can sense changes in light. Young look like miniature adults.

  1. 01Worm-like but scaly. Shiny, evenly scaled skin with no rings or segments, which tells it apart from an earthworm.
  2. 02Dot-like eyes. Two tiny black spots on the sides of a rounded head.
  3. 03Short, blunt tail. A very short, rounded tail whose tip it pokes into a captor’s hand.

02

Size

02 in4 in6 in8 in10 in12 in Typical adult · about 7 in (18 cm)

Most adults are 5 to 8 inches (13–20 cm) long, though sources give a wider span of roughly 3 to 13 inches. The largest known reached about 11½ inches (29 cm). Hatchlings are under 3 inches long.

03

Range & habitat

Texas blind snake exposed under a lifted flat rock on a stony hillside
Fig. 3 — Flat rocks over damp, loose soil are where most are found.

The Texas blind snake lives in prairies, stony hillsides and sandy or rocky desert country from southern Kansas and Oklahoma south through Texas into northern Mexico. In Kansas it is limited to a handful of south-central and southwestern counties. Snakes in the northern part of the range have sometimes been treated as a separate species, the New Mexico threadsnake (Rena dissecta), but a 2022 revision folded that name back into R. dulcis.

It spends nearly its whole life underground, in moist, loose soil or sand and under rocks, often inside ant burrows. It has no special digging tools, so it follows tunnels made by ants and earthworms. After spring and summer storms it sometimes surfaces in gardens and even turns up in houses.

State guides: Texas · Oklahoma

04

Diet & predators

This snake feeds on the eggs, larvae and pupae of ants and termites. It slips headfirst into a colony and follows the tunnels to the brood chambers. To survive the defenders it coils up and smears cloacal fluid and musk over its body, a coating that repels the ants, and its tight, overlapping scales protect it from bites.

Feeds on

  • Ant eggs, larvae and pupae
  • Termites
  • Other soft-bodied insects

Preyed on by

  • Screech owls
  • Roadrunners
  • Night snakes and other snakes
  • Moles and domestic cats
Ants tending larvae inside a nest chamber
Prey — ant larvae and pupae.
Eastern screech owl at the entrance of a tree cavity
Screech owls eat blind snakes but also carry some home alive.

05

Behavior & seasons

Texas blind snakes are active in the evening and at night and are seldom seen above ground except after rain. In Kansas they become active once night air reaches about 64°F and favor nights around 78–82°F. They are often found in groups; eleven were once found under a single rock. If picked up, the snake wriggles and pokes its tail tip into your hand, which is harmless.

The species is best known for an odd partnership with eastern screech owls. In a long-term study near Waco, Baylor University researchers found that owls carried live blind snakes back to their nest boxes. The snakes stayed in the nest debris and ate the insect larvae that infest owl nests. Owlets in nests with blind snakes grew faster and were more likely to survive than owlets in nests without them. When are snakes active in Texas?

06

Reproduction

Breeding probably happens in spring, but courtship has rarely been seen. Females lay small clutches of about 2 to 7 eggs from late June into July, in underground chambers, sometimes 18 to 30 inches deep. They coil around and guard the eggs, and several females may nest together in a small colony.

07

Conservation

The Texas blind snake is not listed under the US Endangered Species Act. Kansas, at the northern edge of the range, listed it as a state threatened species in 1987 and has designated critical habitat in eight southern counties. Pesticide use and mining have been named as concerns there. Very little is known about how long these snakes live. Endangered US reptiles

Keep reading

Sources

Data updated October 2026 · How we build these pages