Originally posted on Pura Vida Stories:
The other night I was returning to base when I caught something slithering off the road. I assumed it was a snake, but when I saw what it really was I called everyone else over and told them to look at what I had found, since they were never going to see one again. It was a caecilian. This. Also, word of warning: any post with the word “slithering” in the first sentence isn’t for the faint of heart. Caecilians look like worms, act like snakes, and feel like frogs, but that really doesn’t do justice to how fantastically weird they are.  They are legless amphibians, a distinct lineage whose closest living relative are salamanders but whose closest fictional relative is something out of a David Cronenberg movie. Because besides the lack of external limbs–or external anything, for that matter–caecilians have perfectly smooth segmented bodies with a face so featureless it is often confused for the tail. The ones around here are usually a dull purplish grey, as if they were…