Caecilian

Caecilians (New Latin for 'blind ones', from caecus, blind) are a group of limbless, worm-shaped or snake-shaped amphibians, with either small eyes or no eyes, comprising the order Gymnophiona. They mostly live hidden in soil or in streambeds, making them some of the least familiar amphibians. Modern caecilians live in the tropics of South and Central America, Africa, and southern Asia. Caecilians feed on small subterranean creatures, such as earthworms. The body is noodle-like and often dark in color, and the skull is bullet-shaped and strongly built. The caecilian head has several unique adaptations, such as fused skull and jaw bones, a two-part system of jaw muscles, and chemosensory tentacles between the eyes and nostrils. The skin is slimy, with ring-like markings or grooves. Some species have scales underneath the skin. Modern caecilians are a clade, the order Gymnophiona (or Apoda), one of the three living amphibian groups alongside Anura (frogs and toads) and Urodela (salamanders). Gymnophiona is a crown group, encompassing all modern caecilians and all descendants of their last common ancestor. There are more than 220 living species of caecilian classified in 10 families. Gymnophionomorpha is a recently coined name for the corresponding total group which includes Gymnophiona as well as a few extinct stem-group caecilians (extinct amphibians whose closest living relatives are caecilians but are not descended from any caecilian). Some palaeontologists have used the name Gymnophiona for the total group and the old name Apoda for the crown group. However, Apoda has other even older uses, including as the name of a genus of butterfly, making its use potentially confusing and best avoided. The clade's name 'Gymnophiona' comes from Ancient Greek γυμνος (gumnos), meaning "naked", and ὄφις (óphis), meaning "snake", as the caecilians were originally thought to be related to snakes and to lack scales. The...