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!
Reply With Quote