7 Shocking Snake Stories
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 The beautiful scales of the reticulated python, the longest snake in the world.CREDIT: fivespots | Shutterstock |
Love them or hate them, there's no denying that snakes are an impressive bunch of reptiles. These critters have existed for millions of years, are able to survive in an array of climates and are found on every continent except Antarctica.
But which species of slithering reptile is the hardest to overlook? While there are several contenders for the title of world's largest snake, here are three of the biggest and longest snakes known to man:
Weighing in at 550 pounds, the aptly named giant anaconda (Eunectes murinus) is the largest snake in the world considering its length-to-weight ratio. This species, also known as the green anaconda, averages about 17 feet in length, though some individuals grow to as long as 30 feet.
7 Shocking Snake Stories
Snakes have no ears. Most see about as well as Mr. Magoo. They don't have noses but they can smell very adeptly. The fangs of venomous snakes, which evolved from teeth, are among "the most advanced bioweapon systems in the natural world," says Freek Vonk of Leiden University in the Netherlands. "There is not a comparable structure as advanced, as sophisticated, as for example a rattlesnake fang and venom gland." And those interesting tales aren't even on this list!
Credit: Wikimedia commons user Jürgen
A Snake Can Eat a Longer Snake
In order to solve a longstanding mystery of how a king snake can eat another snake that's longer than itself, Kate Jackson of the University of Toronto and colleagues recorded and watched the whole thing unfold. The king walks its jaws over the prey in ratchet fashion, then compresses its own vertebral column like an accordion to make the incoming snake go down. Then when all is said and done, the the king pukes some back up. Can you blame him?
Snakes Eat Their Offspring
Many rattlesnake mothers will eat some of their non-surviving offspring, scientists learned in February, 2009. The postpartum cannibalism — moms in the study ate about 11 percent of their eggs and dead offspring. Why? "A cannibal rattlesnake female can recover lost energy for reproduction without having to hunt for food, a dangerous activity that requires time and expends a great deal of energy," said Estrella Mociño and Kirk Setser, lead authors of the study and researchers at the University of Granada in Spain. [FULL STORY]
Credit: null
Snake Can 'Fly' 50 Feet
Look out below! If paradise tree snakes want to get from one tree to another without climbing down, they fly. Well, glide, really. To get airborne, they either drop from a branch or actively leap off the branch to get a little more height in order to glide farther. Then they flatten their bodies out and make slithering S-waves for in-flight stability. "They flatten their ribs and make themselves Frisbee-like in form," explains Jake Socha of the University of Chicago.
Credit: Roy Wood, National Park Service
Pythons Eat Entire Prey, Bones and All
Adult pythons can go months without a meal. But when they eat, nothing is wasted. These snakes have evolved a system to suck the calcium from their prey's skeleton, making for a more nutritious meal."They are therefore physiologically fine tuned to cope with prolonged fasting, re-feeding on large meals, and intense digestion and nutrient absorption," says Jean-Herve Lignot of Louis Pasteur University in France.
Credit: Frank Luerweg/University of Bonn.
Cobras Aim for Your Eyes
Spitting cobras don't actually spit. Rather, muscle contractions squeeze the cobra's venom gland, forcing venom to stream out of the snake's fangs and up 6 feet (nearly 2 meters) away. If they hit you in the eyes, the neurotoxin can blind you. And they do indeed aim for the eyes, scientists discovered in 2005. But wait, there's more. The venom is launched not in a stream but in a spray with a geometric pattern that's quite suited to nailing you in the eyes, scientists learned in January 2009.
Credit: Blair Hedges, Penn State.
World's Smallest Snake Could Curl Up on a Quarter
The smallest known snake, discovered in 2008 in Barbados, is just under four inches (10 cm) long and slim as a spaghetti noodle. Leptotyphlops carlae just might retain the title, too. "Snakes may be prevented by natural selection from becoming too small because, below a certain size, there may be nothing for their young to eat," says its discoverer, Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State.
Snakes Go Months Without Food. And Grow!
Imagine if you could stop eating for months, burn fat, grow taller, and be just fine! Marshall McCue at the University of Arkansas withheld food from 62 snakes — ratsnakes, western diamondback rattlesnakes and ball pythons — for about six months, typical for snakes in the wild, McCue and colleagues said. The snakes reduced their metabolic rates to survive, some by up to 72 percent. Amazingly, they also got longer, burning up their fat stores. "These animals take energy reduction to a whole new level," McCue said.
McCue withheld food from 62 snakes belonging to one of three different species (ratsnake, western diamondback rattlesnake and ball python) for about six months and observed their metabolic rates. It is typical for snakes in the wild to go without food for this long. He found that snakes reduced their standard metabolic rates, some by up to 72 percent. “Snakes already had low energy demands. We didn’t know they could go lower,” McCue said.
Despite the lack of food, the snakes continued to grow in length. “To me, this suggests that there must be a strong selective advantage to growing longer,” McCue said. He added evolution has led to snakes that are extremely efficient at frugal use of available resources which come from within their own bodies.
During the first stages of starvation, all the snakes burned up selected fat stores. The next energy source to go differed among the snake species. The ratsnakes, which live in an environment with abundant rodent prey, began to break down proteins faster than the pythons or rattlesnakes.
“The protein use was higher in the snakes less well-adapted to starvation,” McCue said.
Understanding how snakes can succeed in food-scarce environments will add to the overall picture of snakes' evolution.
Despite the lack of food, the snakes continued to grow in length. “To me, this suggests that there must be a strong selective advantage to growing longer,” McCue said. He added evolution has led to snakes that are extremely efficient at frugal use of available resources which come from within their own bodies.
During the first stages of starvation, all the snakes burned up selected fat stores. The next energy source to go differed among the snake species. The ratsnakes, which live in an environment with abundant rodent prey, began to break down proteins faster than the pythons or rattlesnakes.
“The protein use was higher in the snakes less well-adapted to starvation,” McCue said.
Understanding how snakes can succeed in food-scarce environments will add to the overall picture of snakes' evolution.
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