Fun Snake Facts

Another forum that Raber, GA and I frequent has a lot of younger snake owners so to help them understand just how very cool and fascinating their snakes are and encourage them to understand more about how a snake is designed I pulled this together a few months back. Thought it might be fun to share it here and encourage other members to add more cool snake facts to this list.

Just for fun some facts about how nature designed your pet snake:

- they can hear but have no external ear openings....they "hear" through their body and their lower jawbone

- they can recycle their own urine...they produce two forms of urine - the typical liquid pee and the solid urates....they have no bladder so their liquid waste goes through the kidney and straight on to the cloaca....they have this amazing ability to reclaim part of their own waste liquid and recycle it as in nature they have to live through some very dry seasons and may not have regular access to a clean water source, so they pull a lot of liquid from their live whole prey item.....after this process is complete the leftover is the solid urate....in captivity (or in nature when water is plentiful) they pass liquid urine as well as urates since they are very well hydrated so don’t need to be recycling every drop of liquid they take in.

- they can tell which way a rodent is travelling by how much scent is picked up by the left or right fork of their tongue (that tongue fits into a spot on the mouth called the Jacobson’s Organ and feeds the brain information)

- they most likely see in infra-red but also to some degree in the same way we do

- their stomach acid is so strong it can fully digest bones, hair and teeth (remember even a fire can’t always fully melt bones and teeth!)

- they can open their jaws two ways....horizontally and vertically....horizontally they can open to 150% or so

- the heat pits (labial pits) are so delicate they are said to be able to pick up temperature varients as minute as 0.002 degrees Celcius

- their scales are organized in ways so that certain types of scales do certain jobs...the big belly scales are tougher and are called "scutes" for instance and protect your snake and help it move

- male snakes have two reproductive organs called the hemipenes though only one is used at a time for mating purposes (females have corresponding twin oviducts)

- snakes even small ones are so strong and have so many muscles that it’s been found they do not kill by suffocation of the prey...they actually squeeze so hard they shut down the prey’s circulatory system...this is a much faster way for them to kill their prey and is safer for them so the prey can’t fight back long

- when feeding it’s been documented in a lab setting that their heart muscle mass can expand up to 40% for up to 48 hours post feeding...this bigger heart helps them deal with the demands of eating one bigger prey item rather than daily small meals like mammals do

- your snake doesn’t have a breastbone so it’s ribs can expand a lot to allow the prey to pass through

- your snake has a breathing tube...the glottis...so it doesn’t stop breathing while it’s swallowing down it’s prey

- snakes don’t have a diaphragm like mammals do...they must move their rib cage to breath properly...this means snakes can’t cough so if they get a respiratory infection that’s why it’s so much more dangerous for them than us

- your snake is ectothermic....that means they get their body temp from the world around them...they cannot shiver or sweat like we do to regulate body temperature....moving around is called thermoregulating and your snake has to do this to be healthy and to be warm enough to digest it’s prey

Just a few fun and interesting facts about your amazing pet snake. They are wonderfully well designed by nature aren’t they! The more we understand how they work, I think the better we can take care of them in our homes.

Jump on in folks! Share some other facts about snakes, correct mine if I've got any of them wrong, let's share that fascination we have with these lovely creatures! :)

Great Post Jo!!!!! Gold-star stuff! :sunny:

Cool. The constricting-shutting-down-the-circulatory-system is awesome. :D

I've become really fascintated with how snake's "work" especially in digestion...here's some things that just blew me away recently....

- snakes that are ambush (aka "sit and wait") type predators like ball pythons have the ability to increase their blood flow volume up to 150-200% in the days immediately following a feed

- this increased blood flow volume goes directly to their intestines, liver, etc. to deal with digestion (which explains the temporarily enlarged heart after feeding)

- if the prey is extraordinarily large they can "waste" up to 32% of it's available caloric energy due to the above...so therefore....smaller, more frequent aka weekly meals are best for our snakes and small is better than large! (yay Adam!)

- if fed irregularily or fasting, the snake will react by shutting down it's small intestine and other high energy drawing organs

- when first fed after this time, there is a physical need to basically quickly restart it's organs causing a huge strain on the snake and wasting valuable calories....therefore especially after a fast a snake should be offered smaller than normal meals to allow it's digestive process to rebuild more slowly (always made sense to me but now I know why)

Pretty obvious as well why we should be leaving these snakes alone for that critical 48 hours or so after a feeding, isn't it. :)

wow jo... where are you finding all this GREAT info?

Wow, this is some really great information to have, I'm printing it out. Thanks!
I have a question about this one:

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

- if the prey is extraordinarily large they can "waste" up to 32% of it's available caloric energy due to the above...so therefore....smaller, more frequent aka weekly meals are best for our snakes and small is better than large! (yay Adam!)

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Does this pertain to the size and number of prety items per week? I've never been really positive about how many mice I should be feeding my snakes each week.

i am guessing here... (not that you asked me LOL) that large or multiple would put the same strain on the snake.

All answers are welcome :D

So how many mice should an adult ball python get?

Basically Aleesha I'm sort of like a dog on a scent hon. If something strikes me as interesting I start googling and one site leads to another and another or another thing to google for. I love scientific papers though they are sometimes harder to dig up. I just keep digging though, sipping coffee and reading. Eventually I find evidence or backup for things I've been taught to do or instinctively figure make a lot of common sense. If you ever need them I have most of the links saved, I just don't like to flood the threads with them LOL.

Sarah, what they were specifically referencing in that study was snakes that tended to eat very large prey items (larger than girth) and also in relation to the time occurring between meals. From my understanding of this process, if the snake isn't eating for a bit of time, it basically shuts down it's digestive process, routing less blood to it and so forth. This saves the snake energy loss as these are energy sucking organs and it can't waste that energy when there is no food intake happening. Then if it eats a very large prey item (larger than girth) it has to kickstart everything back up (sort of a cold start if you get what I mean).

Digestion is a big enough deal with snakes so digesting overly large prey items, being fed infrequently or fasting just makes this process that much more enery consuming and less productive for our captive lovelies. To me this just shows me the scientific proof that what Adam's been saying all along about weekly feeds of smaller than girth rats being the way to go to keep ball pythons in top condition.

Makes sense on several fronts for me....

1) by feeding consistently and weekly the snake's digestive track will not be triggered to temporarily atrophy

2) smaller prey items each week will not place as much digestive stress on your snake

3) less stress of any sort has got to equate to a healthier snake, that's just common sense to me

4) smaller prey items do not require massive energy outputs to digest them therefore the snake should retain more percentage of caloric value from it's prey

So basically I figure this Sarah. Whether it's one rat or a few mice that equal the volume of that one small/small rat, as long as the snake's system is kept tuned up so to speak - not overfed nor fasting - it has got to work at it's most efficient and healthy level.

As far as how many mice, all I can tell you is our biggest exclusively mouse eating snake here is Doireann (05 Normal Female). She weighs as of today 1,268 grams. She generally eats 4 or 5 adult mice on feeding night. I'll try to remember to weigh them this week and get you a total weight for what she's eating per week if that helps but they are just basically normal adult size white feeder mice.

this should be a stickie... great work jo! :bow:

Thanks Leeshie. I hope lots more members chime in with other fascinating information about how snake's bodies work. I'm fascinated how a creature so vastly different from a mammal goes about things. I know I do a better job with them if I really understand why this or that is important to how their bodies function.

My next personal project is to learn more about exactly how they mature sexually and how reproduction is the same and different than in mammals since I feel horribly clueless about this.

Bizarre side effect of researching ball pythons is I'm now a HUGE fan of african termite mounds. I had next to no clue what a huge impact these amazing creatures and their homes have on snakes, lizards, elephants, cheetahs and human beings just to name a few. Imagine that africans can pan for gold in a termite mound...now that folks is pretty dang amazing!

Oh and according to studies done over there termites, through an incredible series of flues, tunnels and movement of wet mud keep their mounds at an almost perfect 87 degrees with stable humidity, no matter how hot or cold the surrounding area is. Since only about 15% of termite mounds studied were "active" they nicely move out and leave behind lovely homes for ball pythons. Darn nice bugs!

African rats are pretty smart too with their burrows. The one study I read said that no matter the outside temps the burrows kept a steady 85 degrees.

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

Bizarre side effect of researching ball pythons is I'm now a HUGE fan of african termite mounds. I had next to no clue what a huge impact these amazing creatures and their homes have on snakes, lizards, elephants, cheetahs and human beings just to name a few. Imagine that africans can pan for gold in a termite mound...now that folks is pretty dang amazing!

Oh and according to studies done over there termites, through an incredible series of flues, tunnels and movement of wet mud keep their mounds at an almost perfect 87 degrees with stable humidity, no matter how hot or cold the surrounding area is. Since only about 15% of termite mounds studied were "active" they nicely move out and leave behind lovely homes for ball pythons. Darn nice bugs!

African rats are pretty smart too with their burrows. The one study I read said that no matter the outside temps the burrows kept a steady 85 degrees.

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Cool....I had no idea that African terminates were this influential. When I took ecology, I remember that ecologists had recently the coined term, ecosystem engineer, to describe species that design their own homes and in doing so create stable, predictable conditions for themselves and other species.

I knew of several examples, beavers, trees, earthworms, corals, elephants, woodpeckers, and humans. But it nice to add to the list. :)

Here's some of the facts I'll add now:

• Snakes fart! Its called Cloacal Popping! Some species are believed to use it in defense.
• Unlike in humans and other mammals, it is the female that determines the sex of the offspring. This is because snakes use the ZW system of genetic sex determination. In the ZW system, females are the heterogametic sex (ZW) while males are the homogametic sex (ZZ). Hence, it is the presence of the Z or W chromosome in the ovum that determines the sex of snakes (and I think all squamates for that matter).
• Ball Pythons have high rod packing densities in their eyes comparable to the packing densities seen in cats. Rods are used for night vision. Hence, ball pythons can detect even the faintest light in darkness.
• Many snakes, including BPs, have visual pigments in their eyes that can detect UV light. This can be used in foraging during the day and/or tracking down potential mates. The urine of rodents contains substances that reflect UV light and snakes can use UV vision to follow these tracks. Many pheromones also reflect UV light.

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Originally Posted by Mendel's Balls

[*]Many snakes, including BPs, have visual pigments in their eyes that can detect UV light. This can be used in foraging during the day and/or tracking down potential mates. The urine of rodents contains substances that reflect UV light and snakes can use UV vision to follow these tracks. Many pheromones also reflect UV light.

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Now that there is some cool information.

BTW, thanks for giving me an idea for a new title. :P

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

So basically I figure this Sarah. Whether it's one rat or a few mice that equal the volume of that one small/small rat, as long as the snake's system is kept tuned up so to speak - not overfed nor fasting - it has got to work at it's most efficient and healthy level.

As far as how many mice, all I can tell you is our biggest exclusively mouse eating snake here is Doireann (05 Normal Female). She weighs as of today 1,268 grams. She generally eats 4 or 5 adult mice on feeding night. I'll try to remember to weigh them this week and get you a total weight for what she's eating per week if that helps but they are just basically normal adult size white feeder mice.

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Thanks, Joanna, this is probably the most informative thread I have ever seen on these amazing animals. And it's really cleared up a lot of questions I had on feeding!

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Originally Posted by xdeus

BTW, thanks for giving me an idea for a new title. :P

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I had no idea what you what you were talking about until I looked to the left. :)

Here's a another fact: All snakes are carnivores. Some snakes even eat other snakes. There's even an entire genus of snakes (Ophiophagus) who derive their name from this behavior. Ophiophagy is the technical term for snake eating.

all bow to the Cloacal Popping Engineer :bow:

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Originally Posted by recycling goddess

all bow to the Cloacal Popping Engineer :bow:

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:8: Too bad the pay isn't that great, but it does make for some interesting party conversations.

and i bet you smell reeeeeeeeeeeeal nice too :puke:

Oh thank you for the information about snake's eyesight! That's one aspect I've haven't delved into yet (along with my "exactly how do snakes do it" current research project). Pretty neat that since rodents are known for marking their areas with urine, their predator developed eyesight that can "see" that urine in the pitch dark....boy nature is impressive isn't it!

Glad you found this thread interesting Sarah! :) I've been tucking all this information away for ages and though it might be fun to put it here and watch it grow as others contributed their own information.

'Tis Stickied! This is just the COOLEST thread! Thanks Jo, and to everyone else who participates by adding new info!!

Awww thank you Judy! I'm glad to see that this information will stay available to newcomers and even folks that have had snakes awhile and might learn something new and cool about these amazing creatures.

well i for one... have learned so much! :sweeet:

thanks judy!

Great info everyone!

There is such a thing as a "flying snake" that can spread it's ribs and glide from treetop to treetop. Also, ALL snakes can swim. Some snakes give live birth, and some lay eggs. I think It would be neat to research a snakes "crushing power" force of lbs per sq. inch? something like that? I would do it, but I'm at work..:P

What awesome awesome info you posted Jo!

i've been doing alot of research on snake venom. mainly because im going to school for toxicology, an im doing an undergrad research project on it. so i've been learning alot of things i really didn't know about snakes. i don't own any venomous species but i have always bee fascinated by them...

Great thread! In response to "crushing power", Wikipedia reports that a gopher snake crushing a mouse exerts about 6-30kPa (about 0.9-4.5 lbs. per square inch).

Speaking of venom....

- There's are around 3,000 species of snakes worldwide but only about 450 carry any kind of venom, only about half of those have venom dangerous enough to kill humans.

- Pit viper venom products are used to prevent post-surgical clotting in cardiac patients.

- There is a study going on with copperhead viper venom that is showing the protein from this venom can slow the growth of breast cancer cells.

- One of the most exciting current studies uses a drug created from the venom from Malayan pit viper. It may save a lot of stroke victims and give them a better post-stroke quality of life. Current "clot busting" drugs must be given within 3 hours of the stroke, but this new drug can be given within 6 hours. Doubling this window of opportunity is a huge step forward in stroke treatment especially with an aging US population.

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

Speaking of venom....

- There's are around 3,000 species of snakes worldwide but only about 450 carry any kind of venom, only about half of those have venom dangerous enough to kill humans.

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The number of venomous snakes dangerous to humans is just about right on, but the number of species that can be considered "venomous" is somewhat in flux right now. This work is very recent (only since early in this decade have we really known this)....so it is probably too new to make itself into many of the textbooks. New data suggests that the number of "venomous" snakes is considerably higher--up to ~2,000 species from hundreds. According to Dr. Bryan Fry of the University of Melbourne, "All colubrids are venomous except the rat snake clade which underwent a secondary loss after favoring constriction for prey capture." (Note because of the ambiguity of common names as well as the changing taxonomy of snakes-->not all commonly considered "ratsnakes" can be considered non-venomous. See this paper for what I mean!)

Up until very recently, the analytical chemistry tools necessary to detect venoms weren't really widespread enough to be put to use by many herpetologists/biologists when studying reptiles. I had a genetics professor in college tell me that when you look for something and don't find it there are always two possibilities (1) it really isn't there (2) you didn't find it because you didn't look hard enough or have the right tools to see it.

Condition (2) apparently is what went on when people came up with the list of venomous reptiles! When researchers really started chemically deciphering the saliva of snakes, they found venom toxins in many more snakes and lizards than previously thought. (In fact, the Komodo dragon does not have "virulent/toxic bacteria", this is a myth, and instead it has venom!) As with most things in biology there is more of a continuum than simply "hot" and "cold". Another way of seeing this is to think outside of the anthropogenic box. What is cold to us might be potent enough to stun a small soft skinned prey item like a frog or gecko and allow a snake previously thought as "non-venomous" to shallow its prey. See this post of mine as well.

What really separates species that can be considered "hot", "warm", and "cold" to us isn't so much the presence of venom as the way it is delivered. There's the quicker front-fang, rear-fang injection methods and then there are those that simply bite/chew their prey to inject venom into it. But the chewing method works fine on the prey of those species.

All of this is part of the working hypothesis that is the Toxicofera hypothesis, which states that all squamates are descended from a single venomous ancestor. This hypothesis predicts that there are evolutionary remnants or vestiges of venom in all snakes. Current research is looking for venom genes in boids. If found, this would be further evidence for this hypothesis.

A lot of herpers probably won't welcome this research, because it could be easily misconstrued by those who want to ban herps. Increasing the number of venomous herps is not going to immediately win us any votes with the biologically illiterate and those who only superficially and irrationally fear all snakes and reptiles. Some people have and will try to censor this research, ignore it, or dismiss it, but I think it's better to be informed on what the research is really saying. That way herpers can respond to it intelligently! Further, this research isn't going to go away-It’s likely to get more and more press/attention in the future. The fact that many more snakes contain venom than previous thought, some of which is biochemically quite complicated, means that the venom treasure trove for pharmaceutical companies and clinicians is a lot bigger than we previously thought! This research could be used positively by all those who love herps to push for more widespread reptile conservation. I reminded of a quote.....

"In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught." -Baba Dioum, Senegalese conservationist

Furthermore, it is essential, in my opinion, that those who own 1 or 100s of snakes really understand that the presence of venom isn't the only thing to consider when deciding if a snake is dangerous or "hot" to us! The quantity (dose) and types of venom, the delivery method, etc. all make a difference. Some sources that I consider pretty reputable as far as science news even blow the new research a bit out of proportion in their byline. See this article from Science Daily. The title "Venom Hunt finds "Harmless" Snakes a Potential Danger" is a bit misleading. They forget to put the words "could be" before "a Potential Danger". They also don’t do a good job of quantifying the danger. Some swelling and failure of blood to clot at a bite site isn’t necessarily life threatening!

If you really want to learn about the details of this research see the following list of primary research publications. http://www.venomdoc.com/publications.html The Venomdoc site also had its own forum.

The paper linked above, the Nature paper from 2005, and the 2004 Molecular Biology and Evolution paper are a good place to start in the literature.

I also hope this post will help shed some light on what is a complicated "current science events" subject.

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Originally Posted by Mendel's Balls

See this post of mine as well.

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Sorry about the dead link above....here's the correct link.

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...20&postcount=4

Mendel..... :handshake :bow: Stellar post!

~mike

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Originally Posted by wildlifewarrior

Mendel..... :handshake :bow: Stellar post!

~mike

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Thanks.

Mendel, as always, Thanks for the invaluable psot. Tons of informative reading in there.

mendel if i was a moddie... i could have happily fixed that link for you :D

thanks for sharing this info. can't wait to tell my hubby about the komodo dragon... :sweeet:

Here's a nice link with some fun snake facts, too. It has the biggest, smallest, heaviest, etc. Some of them were obviously already covered, but still it's a fun site with some good info.

melissa, i don't see a link here :(

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Originally Posted by python.princess

melissa, i don't see a link here :(

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Sorry! Thanks for waking me up....
http://www.cfrar.com/snakefacts.htm

This has been, by far, one of the very best threads I've ever read. Thanks to all who contributed. Special thanks to Joanna and Mendel. You guys rock! :rockon:

Thanks Alice! I originally started a thread like this over on another forum to help some young herpers understand just how "cool" their pet snakes really are. I figured if they got a snake for the coolness factor and to show off to friends, maybe if they got hooked into how amazing snakes are, they might understand and treat them better. Turned into something I thought would be fun to share here as well.

Glad you are enjoying the thread. :)

The Kapuas Mud Snake is the first snake discovered that can change its skin color. Unfortuneatly, it's venomous, so it won't show up in the pet trade anytime soon!

I found the stomach acid thing extremely cool. So if you were to open the stomach of a dead snake, we'd basically burn ourselves to death??

My male normal BP weighs around 1250 grams, is one med rat good for every 10 days like hes used to, or should i go one rat or two very week? hes 44" and has never refused a meal, any way i can healthily bulk him up? by the way he hatched in 2006. is that a good weight and measurement for a snake that age? :snake:

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Originally Posted by wildmike1187

My male normal BP weighs around 1250 grams, is one med rat good for every 10 days like hes used to, or should i go one rat or two very week? hes 44" and has never refused a meal, any way i can healthily bulk him up? by the way he hatched in 2006. is that a good weight and measurement for a snake that age? :snake:

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This isn't a ask your questions thread....

I love all of this. I am a teachers aide and my students are VERY interested in Pythons now. So there are a lot of great little tid bits that I can share with them. I try to tell them 1 little thing every day....eventually I will bring one in to let them see. They are totally into it and ask for pics daily. It is pretty awesome to see little 2nd graders so into it. I even have parents asking me about it because their children are coming home and talking about it.

Anyways........super cool thread!!

I am doing a informative speech on ball pythons for my speech class in college. Would you mind giving me some of the links you said you had saved so I can look up some more info? please and thank you!

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Originally Posted by BPelizabeth

I love all of this. I am a teachers aide and my students are VERY interested in Pythons now. So there are a lot of great little tid bits that I can share with them. I try to tell them 1 little thing every day....eventually I will bring one in to let them see. They are totally into it and ask for pics daily. It is pretty awesome to see little 2nd graders so into it. I even have parents asking me about it because their children are coming home and talking about it.

Anyways........super cool thread!!

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Hey Guys, I love this forum and this thread,

My son is 13, and is preparing a speech for his home room class, in which I will be present with a few cool living examples (in the spring). I cannot wait to share this thread with him,

There are so many smart people here, all I can do is absorb

Thank You Thank You

Excellent thread with good info, But Is hair and teeth of the food item digested or secreted ??

This was thoroughly enjoyable. Hats off to you!