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Newly discover legless amphibians experience out their life in underground burrow , tending their worthless pink untested , which go forth from their egg as miniature adults .
If they sound like something out ofa demon picture show , they look it too : These creatures , part of a grouping of creature called caecilians , could pass for tremendous earthworms . But they ’re actually vertebrates with anchor , more like stove poker or frogs .
A doting caecilian mother coils around her eggs, which will hatch out mini-adults within two to three months. [Read full story]
The find of new vertebrates is uncommon , especially outdoors of tropical rain timber , but the new caecilians add up mostly from human - inhabit area in northeastern India . They ’ve escaped notice for so long because these burrowersspend their lives underground , out of sight of human eye .
To discover the new family , researchers lead by the University of Delhi ’s S.D. Biju spend hundreds of hours spread over five eld digging in soil at 238 locations in northeastern India . They found more than 500 caecilians , and genetic testing evince that the wormlike fauna did not check into the known family grouping of these animals . In fact , they seem to have divide off from their closest relative in Africa more than 140 million long time ago . [ See Images of Baby Caecilians ]
Biju and his fellow , who report their findings Tuesday ( Feb. 21 ) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B , dubbed the new home Chikilidae .
Females of this family construct nests for their young underground , laying egg and coiling around them for the two to three month it take the embryos to cover . Unlike frogs and other amphibian that modernize through a polliwog or larva leg , these babies emerge as miniature adults . Although not seen in the newfangled species , some types of caecilians get an additional nutritionary boost from mom when they hatch : They literally eat theskin off her back .
The habitat of these freaky creature is under scourge , as farming learn over timberland land in northeast India , agree to the University of Delhi . Although caecilians are harmless , local lore has it that they are implausibly vicious snakes , another cistron that threatens these mysterious , secretive animate being .
