Taxa
Pareidae
Family
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Pareidae is a small family of snakes found mainly in Southeast Asia, with one subfamily restricted to southwestern India, comprising 42 species in four genera divided between the subfamilies Pareinae and Xylophiinae. The two subfamilies are thought to have diverged roughly 40 to 50 million years ago, in the early to middle Eocene. Pareinae members are nocturnal, arboreal predators with blunt heads and elongated bodies, many specialized for eating snails using an asymmetrical lower jaw that lets them draw the soft body out of a spiral shell. Xylophiinae members instead live and burrow on the ground, following a very different lifestyle from their snail eating relatives.
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