Black-finned Snake Eel

Amazing fact

The black-finned snake eel burrows into sand starting with its tail.

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An illustration based on the real animal.

A little discovery to share.

The black-finned snake eel burrows into sand starting with its tail.

THE REAL WORLD

The real Black-finned Snake Eel

Facts about the real animal.

It hides its body in the sea floor with just its head sticking out, waiting for prey.

Although its name includes umihebi, meaning sea snake, it has no venom.

It lives from Japanese seas south of Tokyo Bay to the Korean Peninsula, Indonesia, New Guinea and Australia.

It lives on sandy or muddy seabeds.

Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF

Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.

Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.

Sources and how we check

We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.

The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.

This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.