Critically Endangered
Uropeltis shorttii
Uropeltis shorttii
Uropeltis shorttii is a lizard or snake in the family Uropeltidae, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
U. Shorttii is a small, dark bluish black burrowing snake, with distinct yellow crossbands. The prefrontals are not in contact with rostral, subequal in size to the nasal and ocular scales. The parietals are large, the largest of all the head scales.
It may attain a total length (among them tail) of 30 cm (12 in). The dorsal scales are arranged in 19 rows one head length after the head, in 17 rows at midbody, and in 17–15 rows one head length before the vent.
This species was first described as Silybura shorttii by British naturalist Richard Henry Beddome in 1863.
Range and habitat
U. Shorttii usually lives in forest, at altitudes of 1,300–1,600 m (4,300–5,200 ft), and it can not persist in human-modified habitats. The species is endemic to the southern Eastern Ghats of India. It is found only in the Shevaroy Hills of Salem district in Tamil Nadu state in South India.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
It is a burrowing snake, presumed to be nocturnal, feeding on soft-bodied worms.
In crisis
U. Shorttii has most recently been assessed for The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2019, and is listed as "Critically Endangered" under criteria B1ab(iii).
Uropeltis shorttii is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Uropeltis shorttii, Wikidata item Q16602097. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
