The specific name, schaeferi is in honor of German herpetologist Christian Schäfer who collected the holotype.

[3] X. schaeferi is found in the Malaysian state of Selangor, in western Peninsular Malaysia.

[1][2] The preferred natural habitat of X. schaeferi is forest.

[2] In the genus Xenophidion, there is one sister species, X. acanthognathus.

Molecular analyses of a new specimen of X. acanthognathus reveal that it only differs from the holotype of X. schaeferi by a minimum sequence divergence of 0.27%.