- One species of fer-de-lance, a deadly viper, has been recorded swallowing prey that was 1.6 times its own body weight.
- The venom of the king cobra, the world's largest poisonous snake, is strong enough to kill an elephant.
- The paradise tree-snake of South-east Asia can 'fly' through the air by flattening its body into an s-shaped ribbon.
- The rattlesnake tail is made up of a series of loosely linked, interlocking chambers that when shaken, vibrate against one another to create the warning signal of a rattlesnake.Only the bottom button is firmly attached to the tip of the tail.
- Scales on the underside of the snake (ventral scales) provide the contact edges essential for the snake to move. At the end of the ventral scales is an anal plate which protects the opening to the cloaca. The cloaca is a shared opening for waste and reproductive material to pass.
- Snakes have dry keratinous scales. The size, arrangement, and number varies by species and location on the body. Generally, scales on the head are larger on top, smaller and more numerous on the sides and around the mouth and chin.
- Body scales usually lie in linear rows with each having a fixed number of scales, typically an odd number ranging from 13 to 27. This number is species specific.
- The body of the snake contains a string of vertebrae (bones that make up the spine. Typically, there are more than 120 in the body and tail and in some species as many as 585.
- In most venomous snakes, the delivery of venom is much like a hyperdermic needle. When the victim is first bitten with the fangs, muscles on the venom gland are compressed forcing the venom through the venom duct into the venom inlet on the fang, through the venom canal, and exiting the outlet channel into the wound.
- Pit organs, present in boas, pythons, and pit vipers (which includes rattlesnakes) can sense infrared heat radiated from an object. Basically, this vision detects a temperature difference in an object and its surroundings. This is ideal for hunting warm-blooded mammals and birds at night.
- Snakes occupy all land masses except New zealand,iceland,ireland and scattered smaller islands.They are absent from polar region also.
- The largest snakes in the world are members of the family Boidae, which includes the boa and the python. Some members of this family never attain a length of more than 0.6 m (2 ft),but the largest may grow to more than 9 m (30 ft).
- Sea snakes have no gills and must rise to the surface for air, but they can remain underwater for several hours, obtaining dissolved oxygen from water that they swallow and eject.
- Approximately 2500 different species of snakes are known. Approximately 20 % of the total number of the snake species are poisonous.
- The skin and outer covering of the horny scales are shed periodically and usually in one piece, including the hard, transparent covering of the eye known as the spectacle(snakes lack movable eyelids, and the spectacle protects the constantly open eyes). The frequency of shedding varies with different species , according to the size and age of the individual. Young, rapidly growing snakes shed their skins more frequently than the slow-growing adults. In some species the skin is shed about every 20 days; in others, only once a year.
- The big pythons can eat animals that weigh up to about 68 kg (150 lb), but swallowing such a meal is a difficult process.
- The snake must bite to inject its venom; no snake has a stinger in its tail.
- Three species of snake can spit or eject the venom in a fine spray, which is aimed at the eyes of an enemy and projected for distances up to 2.4 m (8 ft). If the venom gets into the eyes, it may cause blindness. The spitting is used only in defense and never to obtain food.
- Vision is well developed in most snakes, but many burrowing snakes are virtually blind.
- Snakes have a strong sense of smell, which is relied on to a large extent in hunting food. Snakes find their prey by sight and scent, and sometimes temperature. Except for burrowing species, snakes have excellent short-range vision. Their sense of smell is extraordinary, thanks to a harmless, constantly flicking forked tongue that carries scent particles to a specialized sensory organ ('Jacobson's organ') on the roof of the mouth.
- Snakes are deaf to airborne sounds. The Cobra does not hear, as it is believed, the snake-charmer’s flute. They can, however, feel vibrations through the ground or whatever they are resting on.
- Snakes move slower than an adult human can run; the fastest recorded speed achieved by any snake is about 13 km/hr (8 mph), but few can go that fast.
- Depending on the species, snakes may be egg-layers or give birth to live young. They generally mate in the spring, shortly after leaving whatever hollow, burrow or rock crevice has sheltered them through winter hibernation. Egg-layers usually deposit groups of eggs in dirt, beneath stones or logs, or in piles of decaying wood or vegetation during late spring or early summer. Most snakes hatch or are born in late summer. Whether deposited as eggs or dropped as fully formed miniature adults, snakes are on their own from the start. Snakes do not take any responsibility for the care and protection of their young. Most snakes mature at one or two years of age, and individuals may live up to twenty years in the wild.
- Effects of the bites of Black and Green Mamba -Black and green mambas both produce neurotoxins, which is why they kill so fast. Black mamba is more venomous. Neurotoxin inhibitors and antivenin are generally made from the venom of the same snake, but it is likely that antivenin from one would be at least partially effective against the other. Because these are two different snakes their venom has to be different and thus the antivenin from one may not act for the other.
- Snakes do not leap or jump into the air. Instead, those that do strike out coil themselves enough to get a push or strong outward movement designed to snatch prey or inject venom.Most snakes can only strike about one half their total body length. They do not actually leave the ground. They are capable of striking upward or outward at approximate one half length level.
- When a snake is growing, it sheds its skin as often as every 4 or 5 weeks. You can tell when a snake is ready to shed - its eyes look bluish-white and dull. The shed skin looks like thin clear plastic, with every detail of the scales still visible, even the eyeball cover.
- All snakes are deaf to air born sounds but they do pick up vibrations in their jawbones and on their scent molecules on their tongue. These molecules are connected to the Jacobson's Organ.
- If you put a snake on a smooth piece of glass, the snake will not be able to move because there is nothing to grab onto. The scales on their bellies also act as anchors.
- Most people think that if you put a snake in a small enclosure that it will stop growing or that it will grow so that it fits inside of the tank. This is not true.
- Do you know that most snakes have over 200 teeth.
- Snakes have a transparent scale protecting their eye instead of eyelids.
- Did you know that snake, like all reptiles are incapable of learning.
- Many snakes, such as vipers, boas and pythons have temperature-sensing organs on their heads. These heat pits are sensitive to changes in temperature of as little as 0.002 degrees Celsius, and effectively allow the snake to navigate and hunt in the dark.
- Snakes turn “blue” before a shed. This opaque change to the skin is actually due to the presence of a lymph-like layer of fluid between the old and new skins, prior to the shed of the old skin.
- Reports of the longest, heaviest and oldest reptiles abound. Many cannot be verified. A reticulated python, shot in Indonesia in 1912, was said to be 32 feet 9 1/2 inches in length. One Burmese python weighed in at over 400 pounds. Although seldom as long as the giant pythons, the green anaconda is a heavier snake. Sir Percy Fawcett is said to have killed an anaconda measuring 62 feet in 1907, in Brazil. Since the early part of the last century, the New York Zoological Society has offered a reward of $50,000 for the capture of a live snake greater than 30 feet in length. The oldest recorded snake is a boa constrictor named Popeye, who died in 1977 at the age of 40 years, 3 months and 14 days.
- A snake’s heart can slide 1 to 1 1/2 times its length from its normal position, to allow the passage of swallowed prey. This is because of the relative mobility of the pericardial sac, which surrounds the heart.
- Spitting cobras can inject venom in their bites, but can also force venom out, under pressure, through tiny channels in their fangs. Raising the front half of its body, the snake can aim venom at the eyes and mucous membranes of its target, over 8 feet away.
- The Brahminy blind snake are all females. When mature, they lay fertile eggs, and the young are clones of the mother. Although native to Asia, this snake is now found in warm countries all over the world.
- The Emerald tree boa is born red or yellow, and changes to green after about a year.
- The black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepsis) is brown, gray or olive, but never black. It is a particularly dangerous snake, with a bite that kills 95 to 100 percent of victims. The black mamba may also be the fastest snake, reaching speeds of 8 miles per hour. Other particularly dangerous snakes include the common krait, Russell’s viper (both Asian snakes) and the taipan (Australian). Seven of the 10 most deadly snakes live in Australia.
- When the tongue is in the mouth, it lies in a sheath beneath the glottis with its tip touching the vomeronasal or Jacobsen‘s organ. This is an organ of smell, so when your snake flicks out his tongue, he is, in fact, “tasting” or smelling the air. The forked design allows the snake to detect on which side the smell is strongest, and so to locate his prey,even in the dark
- The glottis, which is the entry to the trachea (breathing tube), can move to either side, to allow the snake to swallow prey. This is the tube you see when you look at the floor of a snake’s mouth. Cartilage around the opening of the tube closes to prevent food from entering the respiratory tract, and produces the classic “hiss” in many snakes.
- The hognosed snake (Heterodon sp.), grass snake and the spitting cobra can feign death by flipping on to their backs when threatened. They open their mouths, allow their tongues to loll and can empty a foul smelling substance from their anal glands, making them highly unappetizing to any potential predator.
- Snakes have a heart, lungs, kidneys, blood, and essentially all the same organs humans possess.
- As a general rule, female snakes are larger than male snakes (same species, same age.
- Snakes are very efficient rodent controllers. Large and medium-sized snakes can eat up to nine pounds of rats and mice per year. That amount of rodents could fill a king-sized pillowcase!
- Females of some snake species can store sperm for as long as five years inside their body.
- Snake scales and rattlesnake rattles are made of keratin, a hard protein also found in the hair, fingernails, and hooves of other animals.
- When threatened, a hognose snake spreads its head and neck, somewhat like a cobra would, then rolls over and plays dead if it continues to be disturbed.
- The common egg eater (Dasypeltis scabra) is a highly specialized snake. Although it is not venomous, the markings are sufficiently similar to those of the deadly cobra or viper that a potential predator will think twice before attacking. The egg eater can also expand its jaws to mimic the larger head of the venomous. To consume an egg, the jaws can expand to four or five times the size of the egg. Once engulfed, the egg is pierced by two specialized vertebrae. Other modified bones in the vertebral column stabilize it, prevent its slipping out of the mouth or further into the snake. Yet another set of unique vertebrae crush the egg. Once emptied of its contents, the shell is regurgitated.
- Snakes move by relaxing and contracting muscles lengthwise along the body. Sidewinding is a specialized form of motion that allows a snake to travel with speed and relatively little expenditure of energy along loose desert sand. The snake lifts a loop of its body from the surface, using its head and tail. The loop is moved sideways and then back to the ground. This creates the typical series of unconnected parallel tracks.