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Page 1 of 3 In the previous section I covered the history of snakes, how they got
to be what they are now. But what are they? How do they live their
lives, where do they live? This is what I'll address in this section.
Snakes have a long, narrow body. Their internal
organs are made to fit their long and narrow body type. Snakes have
only one functioning lung, so it's vital that their environment is
clean and not polluted.
An interesting fact to know; to find out
how many "vertabreas" the snake has, you can count the number of belly
scales. Usually there will be a new scale for each vertebrea. It's jaw
is evolved so that the snake can swallow prey many times its size. The
bottom part of the jaw is not locked together, as it is in most other
animals, but it can be separated into two parts. This way its mouth can
open up, swallow the prey, and then pull its jaw together again. When
the snake does this, it looks like it's yawning, opening the mouth up
wide and shutting it again.
Their vision is just awesome, they
don't see like we do; rather they see heat and movements. They also
don't hear anything but very low frequencies, so talking to a snake
will not work. You can shout you lungs out, the snake cannot hear you.
It does however feel the vibration, so stomping your feet in the ground
will definitely get its attention. If you ever seen a cobra hypnotized
by someone playing a flute, you can be sure that the person is stomping
his foot in the ground or similar, as the snake would not hear the
flute.
The males have two reproductive organs, the hemipenes.
During mating only one will actually carry sperm. With young snakes you
can sex the snakes by "popping" them. That means that to check for a
male you pop out the hemipenes by applying pressure to the bottom of
the tail. If done wrong this can hurt the snake and make it infertile,
so you should always have someone show you how to do it before
attempting. This cannot be done with other then very young snakes. The
males are usually a little wider around the vent area before the tail
narrows down quickly (because of the hemipenes inside), while in the
females the tail narrows down more evenly. But this can be very
difficult to see with the naked eye, so the best way to sex a snake is
by "probing". Proping is where you stick a probe into the snake's vent
and see how far in it goes before you meet resistance. In males the
hemipenes makes the probe go in further then in the female.
When
it comes to birth, snakes are not good parents. The fathers are
completely absent, he impregnates the female and leaves. The female
then either lays her eggs, or has live babies. Pythons and corn snakes
lay eggs, while boas have live babies. Some snakes lay ontop of the
eggs till they hatch, actually regulating the temperature for them,
while others such as the corn snake just lays them and leaves. A
pregnant snake is said to be "gravid". After the babies are born or
hatched they are on their own. This might be natures way of regulating
the snake population, because a snake can have very many babies!
However, without any help from the parents most don't make it. For
these it really is survival of the fittest, but also alot of luck!
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