- Snakes can survive a long time without food
- Their backbones are very flexible
- Long snakes have up to 400 vertebrae
- Every so often they shed their skin before this happens their skin becomes cloudy, it’s skin appears dull, they lose their appetite and may become aggressive
- The flying snake lives in trees and jumps from branch to branch and even glides through the air to lower levels
- An anaconda over 8mm in length can eat a caiman 2m long but it can take a week to digest
- African egg eaters swallow eggs whole
- Over 50 species of snakes live in the ocean
- Some snakes who do not want to fight, pretend to be dead
- People sometimes think that the snakes skin is slimy, in fact it is dry and leathery
- Snakes kill 30-40,000 people a year!
- It’s illegal to eat snakes on Sunday in Iraq
- There are no snakes in Ireland, Newfoundland, New Zealand or many South Sea islands
- In Australia, the majority of snakes are venomous, approximately 80%
- Not all snakes lay eggs some give birth to tiny snakes that crawl off and take care of themselves from the start
- Approximately 2500 different species of snakes are known, 20% of these are poisonous
- The snake must bite to inject its venom, no snake has a stinger in its tail
- They do sleep but they cannot close their eyes
- The venom of the king cobra, the world’s largest poisonous snake, is strong enough to kill an elephant
- Snakes can travel 3 – 5 miles an hour
- Snakes have a heart, lungs, kidneys, blood, and essentially all the same organs humans possess. They do not have eyelids or ears
Photo by Alfonso Castro on Unsplash.
