Portal:Snakes

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Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (/sɜːrˈpɛntz/). Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). 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. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae).

Living snakes are found on every continent except Antarctica, and on most smaller land masses; exceptions include some large islands, such as Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, the Hawaiian archipelago, and the islands of New Zealand, as well as many small islands of the Atlantic and central Pacific oceans. Additionally, sea snakes are widespread throughout the Indian and Pacific oceans. Around thirty families are currently recognized, comprising about 520 genera and about 3,900 species. They range in size from the tiny, 10.4 cm-long (4.1 in) Barbados threadsnake to the reticulated python of 6.95 meters (22.8 ft) in length. The fossil species Titanoboa cerrejonensis was 12.8 meters (42 ft) long. Snakes are thought to have evolved from either burrowing or aquatic lizards, perhaps during the Jurassic period, with the earliest known fossils dating to between 143 and 167 Ma ago. The diversity of modern snakes appeared during the Paleocene epoch (c. 66 to 56 Ma ago, after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event). The oldest preserved descriptions of snakes can be found in the Brooklyn Papyrus. (Full article...)

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Russell's viper (Daboia russelii) is a highly venomous snake in the family Viperidae native to the Indian subcontinent and one of the big four snakes in India. It was described in 1797 by George Shaw and Frederick Polydore Nodder, and named after Patrick Russell, who wrote about it in his 1796 work An account of Indian serpents, collected on the coast of Coromandel. (Full article...)

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  • ... that the manga series Reptilia was inspired in part by a story from Japanese folklore about a woman who is transformed into a snake, told to author Kazuo Umezu as a child?
  • ... that table tennis commentator Adam Bobrow's nickname "Snakeman" comes from a trick shot called "the snake"?
  • ... that it can be hard to know which Snake is which?
  • ... that Vanita Jagdeo Borade has been called the "snake woman" for having rescued more than 50,000 snakes?
  • ... that the Maloja Wind in Switzerland can produce a narrow and elongated low-lying cloud known as the "Maloja Snake"?
  • ... that Vanita Jagdeo Borade has been called the "Snake Woman" for having rescued more than 50,000 snakes?

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A plains gartersnake
A plains gartersnake

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