Some Interesting Facts About Snakes

Scientific Classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Order:	Squamata
Family:	Ophidia
Suborder:	Serpentes
Infraorders:	Alethinophidia, Scolecophidia

There is no doubt about the fact that Snakes are elegant creatures. You may fear it or love it, love it, but they certainly invoke your curiosity at all times. . They are mysterious in their nature and have a variety of habits that differ from one another in many ways. So, in this article we attempt to discuss some of the interesting facts that we were able to gather

There are various kinds of snakes available in nature. Some are venomous while some are very docile and not venomous. But men being scared of snakes in general,  tend to kill mostly every possible kind they come across, which is why the snakes are decreasing in number with time. This is potentially harmful to the survival of the snakes in this living condition. Mostly snakes come in contact with humans because the disappearance of their habitats. Such contacts not only kill the snakes,  but lead to a  a massive number of death toll among the rural people because of a snake bite. So it is important that to move forward to preserve their existing habitat.

• A snake in the house is a good omen is what the ancient Chinese wisdom says, because that will mean your family will never starve.
• There are about 2,500 species of snakes of which a meager 20% are venomous. So, please learn to know which species might be harmful, and spare the rest; don’t kill them.
• The human legs are the snake’s primary target because it is easier for them to hit something with their poison which is at their level or is within their striking range.
• The hog-nose snakes and even the grass snakes,  all are very much capable of pretending to be dead when they are threatened. Sometimes, they might even excrete some kind of a foul-smelling fluid out of their anal glands and can even put out their tongue and then loll it. All of these seem to create an unappetizing feature for any predator who go away disgusted.
• The hognosed snakes, the grass snake and the spitting cobra can pretend to have died when threatened and they would open their mouth, allowing their tongue to loll and can empty a foul smelling substance which would make it unappetizing for the predators.
• Snakes are devoid of any sort of eyelids and they do not even have ears. They are absolutely deaf and what they respond to are nothing but the vibrations from the ground which determine their movement.
• The reticulated python of Southeast Asia while is the longest snake, the green anaconda of South America is the largest snake recorded.
• By constricting and suffocating,  snakes like anaconda would kill their prey. They would swallow the food entirely resulting in their shunning food  for weeks.
• Some snakes like the vipers or the pythons have  very acute, temperature-sensing organs which are very  sensitive to a minimum change in the temperature, as little as 0.002 degrees Celsius. This organ is also present in the boa snakes and it is with the help of such organs that they navigate their way and hunt in the darkest hours.
• There are over 300 pair of ribs in a snake’s body.
• Snakes might not have ears, but for some ‘creepy’ reason they can have a large number of teeth. Jokes apart, some snakes can have around 200 teeth, which are not used for chewing, but are rather used for holding their prey in place.
• Snakes would turn ‘blue’ before they shed their skin and this opaque skin represents the lymph-like material that is present in between their old skin, that they already had and the new skin that they are about to gain.
• We have all come across the various tales about the longest snake or the heaviest one or even that about the oldest reptiles found on the planet. Most of us are even aware of the tale about the reticulated python,  all of about 32ft, 9 and a half inches long,  that  they shot somewhere near or in Indonesia around the year 1912. While there are stories about the 400 pounds weighing Burmese python. Green anacondas surely can be recorded to be the heavier among the various species of snakes. There have been stories that the anaconda which was killed in the year 1907, by Sir Percy Fawcett was about 62 ft in length. The New York Zoological Society had allotted a very generous amount of money of $50,000 to anyone who is able to capture a live snake, which has to be alive and measure more than 30 feet in length.
• Popeye, the Boa constrictor is the oldest reptile recorded in the entire history, which had died at the age of 40 years, 3 months and 14 days, in the year 1977.
• Martinique thread snakes are surely the smallest snake that the world has seen as they never grow any bigger than 4 and one fourth inches in length.
• Although they seem to look superficially very different, the internal organs of a snake would function quite the same as that of mammals. These organs are all arranged in such a way, in a successive manner, so that it can give the shape of a tube. All snakes have  a bunch of associated air sacs in  their  right lung,  that extend  up until the very faint. The left lung, in most species is much shorter or they might even be missing. People have a misconception that snakes are devoid of any form of a structure which has bones, but they are utterly wrong. Snakes even possess various crucial organs like the kidneys, heart and even the lungs, among many others. They have blood in their body and brains as well, which are underdeveloped,  and so they are incapable of ‘learning’.
• There might have been various stories of people claiming  that a snake has followed them, but snakes are not generally fast creatures. The fastest that one has recorded is that of 13Km/hr, while most of them have a much slower pace and it is quite possible for a human to outrun them.

• It is recorded that there are only about three species which are able to spit out any form of a venomous fluid out of their body. The spitting of venom is a process that takes place with precision and the spit can possibly reach out to distances  of around 8 feet. The target is usually the eye of the victim and human’s eye are targets too, by a snake. The venom being so effective that any creature can go completely blind almost immediately. Such an act is an example of their use of some intelligence, but that is negligible when compare to other species and this is done as an act of defense and not to gather food.
• Many snakes have a perfect power of vision, while the burrowing snakes are mostly completely blind, yet they posses a great smelling power.
• Records show that  anacondas, have the longest life span, which was of about 30 years.
• New Zealand and Ireland are such places in which the snakes are very rare to find.
• Those snakes that are able to lay eggs are of the oviparous kind and those who would give birth to live ones are ovoviviparous in nature. But some snakes keep a good eye on their eggs; they do not abandon them and go away, completely. The King Cobras are the only ones by nature, who can actually build a nest when they are about to lay their eggs.
• Some snakes have the ability to fly, but, what they actually do is glide from one branch to another. All they have to do is flatten their body into a disc and this would enable them to glide.
• Sea snakes are devoid of gills and so they have to come up to the surface to breathe very frequently. They can still stay submerged in water for quite a while because they have the ability to use the very oxygen that remains dissolved in the water.  A Malaysian set a record of a sorts in three minutes of kissing 51 times a very venomous snake  in march 2006.
• In 2008, a snake in Australia that swallowed four golf balls thinking they were chicken eggs was only saved by emergency surgery.
• A man was arrested in Connecticut in 2008 for his part in coercing his python pet to assault 2 policemen.
• In Indonesia, the Komodo Island is infested with snakes and it has the record of the  maximum quantity of snakes in one Sq, Meter of space, as compared to any other part of the world.
• Rattlesnakes are the cause of about 82% of the deaths in North America, and someone had said, quite weirdly that a rattlesnake tastes like chicken.
• A Black Mamba snake bite results  in an over 95 % mortality rate.
• The reputation for the most dangerous  road on this planet lies with Snake Alley in Iowa’s Burlington district.
• Snakebite has accounted only for 45 deaths in Australia since 1950.