Snake Multiomic Database
Family Pareatidae (3 genera, 15 species) are slug-eating snakes occupy regions in Southeast Asia from eastern India to China and southward to Java, Borneo, and Minanao. They harbor a blunt snout, lack a mental groove, and teeth lacking premaxilla.
Pareatids are slugs and snails diet specialized snakes with body size in a range of 0.45 m to 0.90 m. Their slender body and oversized head facilitate slow arboreal searching on the slender twigs and branches at the ends of limbs and traversing wide gaps, which are convergent with what seen in New World snail specialists. Species in the family forage at night, employing their teeth and independent jawbones in a ratchet-like fashion to exert a continuous pulling pressure on the snail’s body to swallow the snail. All these snakes are oviparous.
Analysis confirm Viperidae, Homalopsidae, Colubridae, Lamprophiidae and Elapidae are the sister groups of Pareatidae.
