For more than 25 years, Burmese pythons have been living and breeding in the Florida Everglades, where they prey on native wildlife and disrupt the region's delicate ecosystems. A new study shows that infrared cameras could ...
Optics & Photonics
Jun 7, 2021
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750
Scientists have recovered fossils of a 60-million-year-old South American snake whose length and weight might make today's anacondas and reticulated pythons seem a bit cuter and more cuddly.
Archaeology
Feb 4, 2009
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0
An Australian ranger has captured the moment a python swallowed a wallaby at a national park in a giant feast that could keep it full for three months.
Plants & Animals
Dec 30, 2014
5
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- Recently an eastern diamond-backed rattlesnake gave birth to 19 offspring; not exactly headline news, except for the fact that the female had been separated from any male snakes for five years. What’s ...
A growing number of snakes are taking on horrific facial deformities, due to a skin disease wildlife experts don't fully understand.
Plants & Animals
Jul 20, 2021
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6
A trio of scientists, one with Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, another from Museo Historia Natural Noel Kempff Mercado and a third independent researcher, report evidence of several Bolivian river dolphins playing ...
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study of a snake with tentacles on its snout has found it has a unique system for sensing prey: its tentacles allow it to "see" in murky water.
Two red-tailed coral snakes have been observed competing over a caecilian in the first documented wild case of kleptoparasitism within the family Elapidae.
Plants & Animals
Mar 26, 2024
0
926
It all started with a grand claim: scientists had discovered the first known four-legged snake fossil from Brazil. The specimen, named Tetrapodophis amplectus, was small—about the size of a pencil—with tiny limbs. It ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Jan 5, 2022
0
337
Wildlife researchers studying mammals in Key Largo have discovered a potentially groundbreaking—if not heartbreaking—way to locate and kill invasive Burmese pythons, especially the big ones.
Ecology
Feb 13, 2023
1
493
Snakes are elongate legless carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Like lizards, from which they evolved, they have loosely articulated skulls and most can swallow prey much larger than their own head. In order to accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca.
Living snakes are found on every continent except Antarctica. Fifteen families are currently recognized comprising 456 genera and over 2,900 species. They range in size from the tiny, 10 cm long thread snake to pythons and anacondas of up to 7.6 m (25 ft) in length. The recently discovered fossil Titanoboa was 13 m or 43 ft long. Snakes are thought to have evolved from either burrowing or aquatic lizards during the Cretaceous period (c 150 Ma). The diversity of modern snakes appeared during the Paleocene period (c 66 to 56 Ma).
Most species are non-venomous and those that have venom use it primarily to kill and subdue prey rather than for self-defense. Some possess venom potent enough to cause painful injury or death to humans.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
