Snakes

 

 

 

There are around 2,700 known species of snake worldwide, with the snake being found on every continent apart from the polar regions, where it is too cold for the snake.

Snakes are elongated, 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. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. 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.

The snake can grow anywhere from 10cm in length, to the enormous anaconda snake that can reach lengths of up to 30ft long! There are two ways that snakes kill their prey, either the snake has a poisonous bite or the snake will wrap itself around the prey to constrict it.

Most species of snake inhabiting colder regions in the Northern Hemisphere, will hibernate through the cold winter months. The snake tends to mate in the spring time.