Chinese has it in their symbols: it’s called Ying and Yang. That for every good there is an equivalent bad and vice-versa, the pull of life and death. However, one of the most feared – and revered - snakes in the whole world seem to show a lot of promise to become the most helpful to man. In times of need.

There are only a few animals on Earth that pose direct danger to man – aside from man that is. None gave rise to so much fear as the dreaded King Cobra. Not only is its choice of diet, that of eating other snakes, sound sickening to humans, its venom can be induce death within 30 minutesto a full-grown healthy human – if envenomation is large enough. And for all its unique traits, no specie of snake have given rise to so much folklore and beliefs as the biggest of the most venomous snake of them all – the King of the Hunt, King Cobra.
A Most Dangerous Venom Turns Good

Central to the mystery that surrounds the King Cobra is its venom. And as snake venoms have been the focus of intense study of many herpetologists and biologists, the King Cobra’s venom may have become more mysterious than most. To boot, they are among the fastest-acting venoms in the venom world.  Stories abound on how death by King Cobra has left many unlucky men unable to respond in time, their nervous system crippled as their muscle receptors are bound by the toxins.

However, that is not the total picture of the King Cobra’s venom. Professor R. ManjunathaKini of the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore has had some very wonderful findings on the reptile’s venom in his studies. From the toxin of the Ophiophagus Hannah or King Cobra, Kini’s group was able to identify a novel protein unique only to the serpent. They call it ohanin (Kini, 2005).

The Miracle Called Ohanin


Ohanin maybe but a small protein made up of 107 amino acids but its effects may surpass even that of the most powerful of painkillers, morphine including.

For starters, the unique protein has been found to be non-toxic up to 10 mg/kg, making it possible to be injected in lab rats. What struck the researchers most was that ohanin protein exhibited two very prominent effects, hyoplocomotion and hyperalgesia. Whereas hyoplocomotion is the inhibition of behavioral activity, an effect identified with sedatives, hyperalgesia increases a human’s sensitivity to pain. Though not really two desirable effects, these shows how drastic and powerful are the effects of ohanin, something that needed a little tweaking to be of great use.
After strenuous research, Professor Kini and his team was able to develop a painkiller from ohanin by putting particular parts of the protein in isolation.

As it turn out, they were able to produce a painkiller that is 20 times more potent than morphine. What is most surprising is it displays zero side effects at dosages even up to 2,000 times that of the effective dose. And though this new drug is still undergoing clinical trials, it may be available by 2016 or 2017.

In the even it goes to market, the ohanin-based painkiller may be the King Cobra’s way of giving back something good from something so devastating.

Nobody in his right mind would want to be eaten alive by snakes – much less have to do anything with them. But environmentalist Paul Rosolie had a mission. And he wanted the world to listen.

The Passionate Environmentalist
As researcher and conservationist, Paul Rosolie, 27, had studied anacondas in the Amazon for nearly a decade and has looked at death in the eye a couple of times because of his work. The gigantic reptile known to grow as long as 30 feet, strikes its prey with its teeth and ultra-powerful jaws. After which, it crushes its prey with its massive body like marshmallows in the mouth of kids. Picking a fight with an anaconda is certainly not for the fainthearted.

For his part, Rosolie has endured being bitten by the giant snake. The closest brush he had with death was when he was seized by one in a chokehold, breaking his rib in the process. Thanks to the timely intervention of five people, the beast was pried off him. Of course, it nearly got his collarbone popped.

But all that is small stuff to what he had in mind, a feature that will premier on Discovery Channel in his first TV special, “Eaten Alive.”The stunt to have a giant anaconda eat him alive is Rosolie’sattempt to bring attention to the rapid decline of the Amazon – not to mention spiked TV ratings.

The passion to pitch in for the environment is evident. Rosolie, tall and dark, says, “I wanted to do something that would absolutely shock people. ” He adds, “Environmentalists, we love to preach to the choir. What I’m trying to do with this is bring in a bunch of people that wouldn’t necessarily know what’s going on in the Amazon.”

Who is Paul Rosolie?
This is not only going to put Amazon’s plight on the map, it is going to shoot Paul Rosolie into a global icon for Earth-fighters.

And his stunt might pull it off. He reveals, ““For the type of attention that this is getting and for the type of emergency that’s going on down there — desperate times, desperate measures.”

Already, news of his video has gone viral. A quick Google search for “Paul Rosolie Eaten Alive” gives out 250,000 results and counting. Not bad for a kid who seem to have never found interest in school – other than the one nature taught him.

A native of Wychoff, NJ, Rosolie had a good impression of nature while still very young. Unfortunately, his love for wildlife is in direct contrast for his hate in sitting in classrooms and not before long by 16 he dropped out of high school, saving money to heed to the Amazon. In spite of this, he got his GED, and focused on his studying environmental science at Ramapo College in New Jersey. By 18, he was able to secure a research position in Peru, in the Madre de Dios region.

One of Rosolie’s teacher, Michael Edelstein, an environmental psychology professor at Ramapo observed, “He was not the most traditional student, because he was always disappearing to the Amazon.” The university professor added, “This is someone who has risked his life many times, and who has a genuine sense of being an explorer and discovering things and going into situations one doesn’t know how will end. There’s a sense of pure wonder about him.”

Staring Death in the Eye
The stunt Rosolie took required tenuous preparation for him and his team. To boot, they needed to find the right snake in the Amazon, specifically in what locals call the “floating forest” for the dense vegetation above a body of water – the very habitat of the anacondas.

To do this, they had to go through the most dangerous stuff (e.g., crocodiles, electric eels, flooding rivers). But they did find the right anaconda, a 25-foot female weighing about 450 pounds. The massive reptile took not one but 12 people working in water over their heads to capture.
More importantly, Rosolie had to wear protection to enable his body to withstand the massive force of constriction that would be upon him once inside. A team of engineers were tapped to build a custom-design suit tailored to his body and built with carbon-fiber. A 3-hour oxygen supply was installed to enable him to breath along with communication devices and a slew of camera. In case he fell unconscious, he had to swallow a high-tech pill for his vitals.

On the day set for the event, Rosolie’s suit was doused in pig’s blood and to entice the snake some more to eat him, he imitated the movements of the pig itself as a prey to the anaconda.

The TV special has caught a lot of attention worldwide but on the down side, it has also generated a lot of flak. Sadly, most of his detractors were animal rights activists.

With the help of a robot, US researchers have described for the first time precisely how "sidewinder" rattlesnakes climb up sand dunes.

By observing snakes on an artificial dune, they found that on steeper slopes the animals flatten themselves to increase their contact with the sand.

Physicists analysed the motion of sidewinders as they climbed an artificial sand dune

They then tested the new insights with a robotic snake and calculated the best strategy for snakes - and robots - to scale sandy slopes without slipping.

The work appears in Science Magazine.

Unstable, granular surfaces like sand dunes pose a particular problem for animals and robots trying to traverse them.
Sand strategy

"We originally hypothesised that the way the snakes could ascend would be to dig their bodies more deeply into the sand, just like we would do on a sandy slope," said senior author Dr Daniel Goldman, who runs a biomechanics lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Continue reading the main story   
“Start Quote

    We found that they could basically ascend any sand dune we threw at them”

Dr Daniel Goldman Georgia Institute of Technology

That was not what he and his team found, however, when they painted reflective markers - carefully - on to six venomous rattlesnakes and put them to work on a tilting bed of sand, fresh from the Arizona desert that these snakes call home.

"One of the first surprises was how nice these animals are as subjects - they tend to just sidewind on command," Dr Goldman told the BBC.
The next surprise, captured by several high-speed videocameras, was that instead of digging in for extra purchase, the snakes flattened themselves more smoothly against the sand, every time the researchers tilted the "dune" more steeply.

Furthermore, it was only sidewinding rattlesnakes - a species called Crotalus cerastes - that used this strategy. Thirteen related species of pit viper, faced with the same challenge, tried other wriggling techniques and got nowhere, with the exception of one: a speckled rattlesnake that inched its way very slowly up the incline using a concertina motion.

Sidewinders, on the other hand, Dr Goldman said, "could basically ascend any sand dune we threw at them".

To test out their findings in detail, Dr Goldman's team of physicists and biologists contacted robotics engineers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

There, Prof Howie Choset and his lab had been working on sidewinding robots for several years. Their designs are aimed at various applications, from search-and-rescue to surgery.

But Prof Choset's robotic sidewinders were troubled by the very same challenge that the snakes had a knack for: sandy ascents.

The robot revealed details of the snakes' success but also learned from the animals about climbing slopes

 A particular robot, nicknamed "Elizabeth", had failed on assignment in Egypt, slipping and falling on a slope within an archaeological site.

So the engineers brought Elizabeth to the artificial dune that Dr Goldman's team had built "in a shed out back of Zoo Atlanta", to see what they could learn.

Sure enough, using the insight from the rattlesnakes that flattening more of its body on to the sand would help with steeper slopes, the robot's performance improved.
Flow stopping

Adjusting Elizabeth's settings also allowed the collaboration to figure out other secrets to the sidewinders' success.

In particular, their motion boils down to a surprisingly simple combination of a horizontal and a vertical wave: a left-right slither, along with up-and-down movement, both travelling down the body but slightly out of sync.

"If you phase those waves just right, you get sidewinding," Dr Goldman explained.

Flattening or enlarging the vertical wave allowed Elizabeth to get just the right amount of contact with the sand. Too much, and the robot would slip; too little, and it risked tipping over.

The reason all these adjustments help the snakes and robots to climb is because they keep the sand more stable underneath them. Getting enough purchase without making too much sand flow downhill is a delicate balancing act.

"What we noticed was that when the snake's ascending effectively... the material behind it was in a nice solid state. And when we applied the changes to the robot, we found a similar feature of the interaction, such that the material didn't flow much," said Dr Goldman.

The key to successful dune climbing is maintaining just the right amount of contact, to keep the sand stable

Andrew Graham is the technical director at Bristol company OC Robotics, which specialises in snake-like robots. He said that although the Carnegie Mellon team were already known for their sidewinding designs, the new study was "a very thorough investigation of the efficiency of the process".

"They've looked at the whole problem, end to end, and demonstrated the application of what they've observed in nature to a robotic model," Mr Graham told BBC News.

He added that the insights from the snakes would help make Prof Choset's robots "more efficient and more applicable to different environments".

Source: Here

 Fewer reptiles command such fear. My middle son Jeff discovered that when he proudly brought a snake into the kitchen to show Mom.

With that snake dangling from his hand and my whole body starting to tremble, Jeff could sense that the balance of power had shifted. Luckily, I shifted both of them out of the house really quickly.
Whether you squeal in delight or scream in terror, the common garter snake is the gardener’s friend.

Close to 90 percent of the snakes in North American gardens are in the Family - Colubridae or Common Snakes, Species - Thamnophis Sirtalis or Common Garter Snake. Often mistakenly called gardener snakes, their name comes from the resemblance of their stripes to old-fashioned sock garters.

Common garter snakes are common in both suburban and urban areas with plenty of cover such as debris, boards, vegetation, rocks, or logs. They also love moist, grassy environments and are often found near water, such as around the edges of ponds, lakes, ditches, and streams.

Highly variable in color, garter snakes typically sport three light stripes running along the length of their black, brown, gray, or olive body. The stripes can be white, yellow, blue, greenish, or brown. One stripe runs down the center of the snake’s back; the other two stripes run alongside this central stripe. Garter snakes

The common garter snake breeds in the spring. The females are ovoviviparous meaning they bear live young usually in litters of 10 to 40 babies. Upon birth, baby garter snakes are independent and must find food on their own. Garter snakes can live two years or longer. Active mainly during the day, garter snakes hibernate from late October through March or early April.

The diet of the common garter snake includes earthworms, leeches, slugs, snails, insects, crayfish, small fish and other snakes, all of which they swallow whole. Large fish, bullfrogs, snapping turtles, American crows, hawks, raccoons, foxes, and squirrels are some of the animals that prey on common garter snakes.

Do they help in your garden? Although insects are a favorite in their diet, the population of common garter snakes is generally not dense enough to consider them a biological control for insect problems.

Garter snakes may be more notable for what they don’t do. No plants are harmed by snakes; they neither eat them nor damage plants while moving through the landscape. They don’t contribute one bit to noise pollution and leave very little in the way of droppings. They avoid the gardener at all costs and will never bite unless stepped on, picked up, forced into a corner, or threatened with injury. Even then they would rather escape than fight.

Garter snakes are our friends. I have learned to make just enough noise to let them know I am around, and my garden friends seem to have gotten the point.

Source: Here

A new species of wolf snake has been discovered in the forests of the Cardamom Mountains of southeast Cambodia. The species is described in the current issue of the journal Zootaxa.
Lycodon zoosvictoriae is named after Zoos Victoria, a conservation group based in Parkville, Australia that has provided support to Fauna & Flora International (FFI), whose researchers — along with herpetologists from Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Germany — made the discovery.

Lycodon zoosvictoriae is a cryptic species that is thought to be both arboreal and terrestrial. Like other wolf snakes, the species is characterized by long, large teeth in the front of their mouth. Lycodon zoosvictoriae measures only 40 cm (16 inches) and likely hunts small lizards and frogs.

The authors, led by Neang Thy of FFI, say the species is likely endemic to the Cardamoms, a range that rises to more than 1,500 meters and houses some of the highest levels of biodiversity in the Indo-China region, which has suffered from large-scale forest loss.

Source: Here

Researchers on Golem Grad Island, Macedonia, stumbled upon a rather intriguing and wholly disgusting find whilst looking for snakes -  a dead young viper with the head of a huge centipede protruding through its body. What a way to go! The report has been briefly described in the journal Ecologica Montenegrina.

Nose-horned vipers (Vipera ammodytes) are venomous snakes found in southern Europe, the Balkans and certain parts of the Middle East. They can grow up to 95 centimeters and possess a characteristic “horn” on the snout, hence the name. They’re also considered to be the most dangerous European viper because their venom is highly toxic, but they’re a pretty docile species that tend to only bite when provoked.
Adult nose-horned vipers usually feed on lizards, smaller snakes and rabbits on Golem Grad, whilst the juveniles eat lizards and a particular species of centipede, the Megarian banded centipede (Scolopendra cingulata). It is not uncommon for snakes to consume potentially dangerous prey, and there have been numerous reports of death due to them “biting off more than they can chew”. Although, as mentioned, these vipers are known to eat this particular species of centipede, it seems that this cocky snake may have underestimated his dinner this time.

S. cingulata can be pretty savage killers themselves; they’re opportunistic carnivores and will eat almost anything that’s not larger than themselves. The authors of the paper note that it’s exceedingly difficult to kill a full-grown Scolopendra. Some people even keep these creepy crawlies as pets. Each to their own I suppose.

The team measured the viper and the centipede; the centipede was found to be 84% of the viper’s trunk length, 112% of its body width and 114% of its body weight. This isn’t hugely impressive compared to the size of animals that snakes have been found to consume previously. But what is interesting/disgusting is that upon dissection, the snake was missing all of its visceral organs- the centipede was occupying the entire volume of the snake’s body. They think it’s possible that the snake swallowed the centipede alive, but the centipede ate its way through the snake in an attempt of freedom, bursting its way through the snake’s abdomen (I am going to have nightmares now…). But unfortunately the poor little guy didn’t make it and died inside the snake with his head poking out. So close… Yet so far…

Source: Here

Why crawl when you can fly? While their relatives slither on the ground, a few snakes take to the air, gliding from tree to tree. The most skilled of them all is the paradise tree snake, and we may finally have worked out why. It gets an aerodynamic lift by shifting its body into an unconventional, yet strangely familiar, form.
There are five species of flying snake, all native to south-east Asia. The five are reasonably average in the looks department – at least, until they begin to move. These snakes slither up trees before launching themselves from branches high in the canopy, undulating their bodies from side to side as they glide elegantly – at speeds of about 10 metres per second – to their destination.

Source: Here

Was the evolution of high-quality vision in our ancestors driven by the threat of snakes? Work by neuroscientists in Japan and Brazil is supporting the theory originally put forward by Lynne Isbell, professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis.
In a paper published Oct. 28 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Isbell; Hisao Nishijo and Quan Van Le at Toyama University, Japan; and Rafael Maior and Carlos Tomaz at the University of Brasilia, Brazil; and colleagues show that there are specific nerve cells in the brains of rhesus macaque monkeys that respond to images of snakes.

Source: Here

Our environment is home to the stealthiest of predators but there are slithery killers that strike in the twinkling of an eye at other creatures that even move at such a blinding speed.

Snakes, according to Wikipedia 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. Many species of snakes have skulls with many 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.”

If you care to know more about the world’s deadliest and most venomous snakes, here is a list for your guide with number 1 as the least and number 10 as the most venomous:
1. Rattlesnake – This snake is easily identified by its rattle at the end of its tale. This snake is found on the most part of America with the Eastern Diamondback as the one that is the most poisonous in North America. The bite of a rattlesnake is harmful and fatal although the juvenile rattlesnakes have more potent venom than the adults because of their ability to inject more amount of venom in victims and prey. The hemotoxic venom is the kind of venom found in most rattles that has proven to do tissue damage, degenerate organs and clot blood in the body for the most part. Its antivenin can help decrease mortality rate at less than 4% when given just at the nick of time.
2. Death adder – This viper is usually found thriving in Australia and New Guinea. These snakes love to kill it kind through ambush. They have shorter and more squatted bodies compared to other snakes and have triangular shaped heads, more similar to the vipers’ appearance. A Death Adder’s venom can cause paralysis and respiratory failure with neurotoxin as the venomous culprit.
3. Vipers – These snakes are found everywhere but the most cunning and venomous are found in the Middle East and Central Asia particularly India, China and South East Asia. Known as nocturnal vipers, they usually attack at night with poison causing necrosis and bleeding.
4. Philippine Cobra – Cobras are venomous but most specie would not make it to this list. However, the Philippine Cobra’s venom is the deadliest among all Cobra specie which they can quickly spit at a maximum of 3 meters. Its venom is also neurotoxin, attacking the heart, affecting cardiac and respiratory functions of the body.
5. Tiger Snake – This one viper is found in Australia and has a strong and powerful neurotoxin that can kill within a matter of minutes. It can cause paralysis and death.
6. Black Mamba – Found in the most part of Africa, the Black Mamba is agile, aggressive and deadly. Known to be the fastest land snake in the globe, its speed is quite blinding which reaches up to 20 km/h. A single bite from this notoriously swift and slim viper is capable of knocking-off 10 -25 adults.
7.Taipan – This one is ruthless coming from Australia. Its potent venom can kill 12,000 guinea pigs at one time. Its venom is strongly neurotoxic.
8.Blue Krait – A fatal bite from this deadly snake is sure death even with the presence of an antivenin killing the victim within 6-12 hours because of its deathly neurotoxin effect which is 16 times more potent than that of a Cobra. These snakes also kill their kind. They are more active at night, making them nocturnal vipers. 9.Eastern Brown Snake – This brown snake is an aggressive killer with 1/14000 of an ounce of venom just adequate to kill a human being.
10.Fierce Snake or Inland Taipan – This one is not that aggressive and usually operates subtly but its single bite alone containing 110mg of venom is enough to kill 100 humans or 250,000 mice!

The above list is the top ten but there is another snake that can be included in this list. It is the Belcher’s Sea Snake but can be set-apart because it belongs to the sea and not on land. Just a few milligrams could suffice in killing 1,000 people.

Sea snakes are known to have one of the strong and mighty venoms but there are also other species of sea snakes that are unique and docile and do not have much venom. Of all the sea snakes in the world, which one is the deadliest? What is the gauge of tagging it as deadliest?

There is a snake bite alone that contains more than enough venom to kill 50 people. The number of casualties is about twice as much as the most venomous terrestrial snakes like the King Cobra, the rattlesnake and the Black Mamba.
The Beaked Sea Snake (Enhydrina schistosa) is notorious, aggressive and vouches for nine out of every ten deaths from sea snake bites. Its victims are mostly fishermen and other people who love to wade or fish in murky water. Every year there are numerous victims that nonchalantly paddle into the waters and get injected by the beaked sea snake’s most potent venom. It thrives mainly from the Persian Gulf to Asia and Australia.

It is in fact the 6th of the deadliest snake but the most cunning among the different species of sea snakes combined. Although most sea snakes have relatively low, moderate to high venom potency, this one is responsible for about 90% of all deaths related to sea bites. The Beaked Sea Snake has a long, slender body that reaches up to 1.2 meters long. Its color is generally light or sometimes darker gray with indistinguishable blue-gray strips. It has a sharply pointed head with a paddle-like tail and the fangs of a Beaked Sea Snake are about 4mm long. They usually feed on shrimps, catfish and other sea creatures it
can lay eyes on.

In this predator-prey relationship, the Beaked Sea Snake is most of the time predator but in some cases, its luck falls short and this dreadful and venomous sea snake becomes prey to other big fish and crocodiles.

Getting a snake as a pet may be uncommon but then, many people still have them as pets. Although majority would prefer to have pets with fur that are affectionate, warm and cuddly, there are still a select few who opt to have a snake that are quite dull, cold and unpredictable.

Before deciding on having a snake as pet, ask yourself what kind of snake is best to keep as a pet? You cannot afford to risk your life living with a treacherous and venomous viper, right? After determining the best kind to keep, you should be able to ready to cope with the demands of taking care of a reptile – its space requirement, diet and many more.
In considering a pet snake, first think of its size when it grows mature. How big can it grow? Do you have a suitable place for it to nurture and thrive? There are snake owners who love to have big snakes that could be wrapped around their shoulders and there are also snake owners who just want to watch them in an enclosure or snake terrarium.

Second thing that you need to consider is the life span of the snake. Are you willing to take care of it for about fifty years because some snakes do reach that age while others just survive twenty years or a bit more.

Now, we can lay out the breed and the kind that can be the best snakes to have as pets.

Garter snake - this one is smaller and usually kept in a small terrarium with length that grows up to only three feet. However, the size is not identifiable to the care and attention. Although small, a garter snake needs much care.

Corn snake – This is the most domesticated breed and often found in homes. Kids can play with them and they are docile compared to the other snakes. This one grows a bit longer up to five feet.

Ball Python- This one is non-venomous and a beginner can learn to take care of it quickly.

The list can go on but these three are the most common and safe to have as pets.

In a recently released special, the world’s biggest snake to ever be discovered was put under the limelight in Titanoboa: Monster Snake.

Estimated to have weighed one and a half tons and measuring some 48 feet long, the Titanoboa is believed to have been the dominant predator after the dinosaurs went extinct some sixty million years ago, with the modern boa constrictors being its present descendants.
In 2006, a movie entitled Snakes on a Train was released to audiences, with the movie’s plot essentially no different from the movie Snakes on a Plane. What made Snakes on a Train somewhat different was how its poster depicted a giant snake in the act of swallowing a train, which says something about the size of the snake featured in Snakes on a Train.

Though the Titanoboa was large, its size wasn’t exactly large enough to swallow a whole train. But its 48 feet long length and recent discovery in 2002 has made it the subject of a number of researchers’ and scientists’ interests, with many privy to its discovery looking at the Titanoboa as a worthy “challenger” against the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Dwarfing the size of today’s anacondas and pythons, the Titanoboa was first discovered by a Columbian student who happened to come by a coal mine, leading to the discovery of what is described as the first rainforest in the World.

Along with the giant snake, giant turtles and crocodiles were also discovered on-site, but it was the large size of the Titanoboa which really raked in a lot of attention, given how much it had defied the snake size conventions of the imagination.

Snakes are the stuff of nightmares for a lot of people. Just seeing and holding these creatures can terrify people, so you can only imagine the terror of being trapped with dozens of them in a plane. That’s exactly the kind of sheer terror the move Snakes on A Plane sought to capture. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, the movie revolves around how people inside an airplane fight to survive after hundreds of snakes are placed and released inside. 
A snake can be described as a legless lizard. It is a carnivorous reptile from the suborder Serpentes. They do not have external ears or eyelids but they do have very keen senses. Snake sizes vary, with some snakes as small and thin as twigs, while others can grow more than 20 feet long and weigh more than an average person. Their skin is covered by overlapping scales and is described as being supple and nice to the touch. As such, snakes are captured for their skins, which are turned to luxury goods such as shoes and bags. Snakes can be found in all of the continents, save for Antarctica.

Many snake species have skulls that have many joints. This lets them swallow prey much larger than their heads. Most snakes have the ability to dislocate their jaws just so they can swallow their prey whole. They feed of smaller animals such as rodents, lizards, birds, snails and even other snakes. Some snakes are also known to slither up to bird nests and eat their eggs. They change their skin and molt during certain times of the year.

Not all snakes are poisonous, with people even keeping them as pets. If you do get bitten by a snake, keep the bite clean and find out what type of snake it was before going to the hospital.