Common Yellowband Caecilian

The Ceylon caecilian, or common yellow-banded caecilian, is endemic to south-western and central Sri Lanka. It is 23 to 40 cm long and resembles a large earthworm, with over 300 transverse folds that make it look segmented. The head has a rounded snout and a pair of extensible tentacles nearer the eyes than the nostrils. It is steely blue above and pale yellow below, with a yellow band along each side (Wikipedia, general species account).

It lives in burrows in damp earth or leaf litter up to 1,355 m and eats earthworms, reversing into its burrow with a captured worm and sometimes twirling its body to subdue it. It breeds in underground chambers, where the female lays strings of about 30 white jelly-coated eggs and coils around them until they hatch into larvae about 7 to 11 cm long. Nationally Vulnerable (Sri Lanka National Red List 2012).