Snake
hideSnakes are elongate legless carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Like lizards, from which they evolved, they have loosely articulated skulls and most can swallow prey much larger than their own head. In order to accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca.
Living snakes are found on every continent except Antarctica. Fifteen families are currently recognized comprising 456 genera and over 2,900 species. They range in size from the tiny, 10 cm long thread snake to pythons and anacondas of up to 7.6 m (25 ft) in length. The recently discovered fossil Titanoboa was 13 m or 43 ft long. Snakes are thought to have evolved from either burrowing or aquatic lizards during the Cretaceous period (c 150 Ma). The diversity of modern snakes appeared during the Paleocene period (c 66 to 56 Ma).
Most species are non-venomous and those that have venom use it primarily to kill and subdue prey rather than for self-defense. Some possess venom potent enough to cause painful injury or death to humans.
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News tagged with snakes
Florida grapples slippery giant snake invasion
Nov 06, 2009 |
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Florida homes and swamps more used to dealing with dangerous critters like alligators now face a more foreign invader -- giant pet snakes escaped into the wild whose numbers are growing at an alarming rate.
Venomous sea snakes play heads or tails with their predators
Aug 06, 2009 |
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In a deadly game of heads or tails venomous sea snakes in the Pacific and Indian Oceans deceive their predators into believing they have two heads, claims research published today in Marine Ecology.
Snakes use friction and redistribution of their weight to slither on flat terrain
Jun 08, 2009 |
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Snakes use both friction generated by their scales and redistribution of their weight to slither along flat surfaces, researchers at New York University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have found. Their ...
'Pelvis Has Left the Building'
Jun 04, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- New research shows that when two species of stickleback fish evolved and lost their pelvises and body armor, the changes were caused by different genes in each species. That surprised researchers, ...
Snakes and how they helped our big brains evolve
May 01, 2009 |
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The threat of snakes gave primates superior vision and large brains -- and fueled a critical aspect of human evolution, UC Davis anthropology professor Lynne Isbell argues in a new book.
Research identifies importance of diet in snake venom evolution
Apr 08, 2009 |
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Axel Barlow's paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on saw-scaled vipers shows that snakes which have evolved to feed on scorpions have also evolved venom which is more lethal to scorpions, demonstrating that c ...
Not just your imagination: The brain perceives optical illusions as real motion
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Feb 02, 2009 |
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Ever get a little motion sick from an illusion graphic designed to look like it's moving? A new study suggests that these illusions do more than trick the eye; they may also convince the brain that the graphic ...
Zoologists: Sea snakes seek out freshwater to slake thirst
Biology /
Nov 06, 2008 |
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Sea snakes may slither in saltwater, but they sip the sweet stuff. So concludes a University of Florida zoologist in a paper appearing this month in the online edition of the November/December issue of the journal Physiological an ...
