Iwasaki's Snail-eater

Iwasaki's Snail-eater (Pareas iwasakii) is a small snail-eating snake in Pareidae, with the blunt head, slender body and specialised jaws associated with extracting soft-bodied prey from shells. Identification should combine documented pattern, scalation, body form and locality because related Japanese reptiles may be very similar. Claims here are limited to the opened species accounts (Wikipedia, general species account; Reptile Database).

It is endemic to the Yaeyama Islands in Japan's southern Ryukyus; its common name records the specialised prey and honours Iwasaki. Information absent from those species-level sources is omitted rather than inferred from relatives. Japanese occurrence follows the site's catalogue and the opened distribution accounts (Wikipedia, general species account; Reptile Database). This conservative treatment keeps unresolved parts of its natural history clearly visible to readers.