A recent study published in Science Advances sheds new light on the enigmatic early evolution of snakes by examining an unexpected source: their brains. The results emphasize the significance of studying both the soft parts ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 27, 2023
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105
A new University of Kansas genomic investigation of a group of unheralded but unique "mud snakes" from Southeast Asia is rewriting the evolutionary history of this family, named the Homalopsidae. The results just were published ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 20, 2023
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4
Monsters slither throughout the crooked mangroves and serrated sawgrass of Florida's Everglades, 20 feet long and up to 200 pounds of sinewy muscle built by devouring everything in their path.
Plants & Animals
Sep 18, 2023
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129
Not only in the tropics do snake bites lead to dangerous envenoming—bites from European venomous snakes can also cause severe physical damage. But their venom also contains active substances that could be used against bacterial ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 15, 2023
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Pythons have huge appetites, but which snake around the world would win an eating contest?
Plants & Animals
Aug 25, 2023
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Scientists working in Peru have named a new species of snake after Harrison Ford in honor of the "Indiana Jones" actor's support for conservation work.
Ecology
Aug 17, 2023
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Across the animal kingdom there are creatures that move through their environments not by walking or running or climbing but instead by simply changing the shape of their bodies. This kind of locomotion is found in snakes ...
Mathematics
Aug 10, 2023
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241
It's hot out there. How hot? Hot enough to scald a lizard. Hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. Hot enough to make you want to live right.
Ecology
Aug 8, 2023
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An international team of researchers has uncovered "unprecedented" snake venom resistance in an unexpected species—the legless amphibians known as caecilians. The research has been published in the International Journal ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 24, 2023
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A new species of snake has been identified for the first time by a team of researchers from the University of Adelaide, the South Australian Museum and the Western Australian Museum.
Plants & Animals
Jul 19, 2023
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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
