personaltrainerlisbon75

Okay snake dudes.

What is the bone structure of snakes like? Do all snakes have the
exact number of bones or does it change considering the species?

A veteranary guy once told except for the tails that all dogs had the
exact same ammount of bones. I found it odd considering how different
looking some dogs are. I doubt all snakes have the same bones except
some obviously have bigger ones.

Speaking of Anaconda's I assume of course they have a spine, what do
they call them the different sections? Vertebraes just like in humans?
Do they have different types of vertebraes like we have 5 types?

How many vertebraes?

Do they have a spinal cord, can damage to the spine create paralisys?

How though is the snake's vertebraes compared to humans? I hear from
hunters that snake bones are actually quite fragile.

Do Anaconda's have lungs? only 1, 2? Where in it's body can we find
the heart and lungs?

How good is their eyesight and what is the purpose of such thin
looking pupils? Is it true that the tongue works as a "scent radar"?

WHat about the muscle on an Anaconda, since it is a lazy looking snake
one would assume that eventual loss of muscle fiber would happen due
to inactivity with muscle athrophy, then again I am thinking by human
standards and of course there is a DNA tendency for this snakes to be
strong but how cna they keep that strength while being so lazy?

How long is the life cycle?

André

chris brown

They're spines with a rather unusual skull and teeth on the front.

It varies. This may prove useful:

http://www.szgdocent.org/cc/c-long.htm

It seems to answer most of your questions.


Yes. Biting through it is how mongeese kill cobras.

They are indeed, and broken ribs are quite common. Note, however, that
snakes do not have sternums, and their ribs are generally very flexible, so
they can bend them. This is how some snakes (not just cobras) spread hoods
when engaging in a threat display, and also how snakes manage to squeeze
through spaces tighter then their own ribcage.


The eyesight of snakes varies from acute to poor. Anacondas are, IIRC,
towards the poor end of the spectrum.


There are two types of pupils commonly found in snakes, round, like ours,
and a vertical slit (there's one exception, which has an interesting
adaptation for binocular vision). The ones with vertical slits are typically
nocturnal or crepuscular hunters, and the slit allows them to open their
pupils wide to see in the dark, while closing them much tighter than a
circular pupil can close. Remember, snakes have no eyelids.

Interestingly, snake eye focussing works by moving the lens backwards and
forwards, like a camera, rather than squeezing the lens the way our eyes do.
The commonly accepted explanantion for this difference is that snakes
evolved from burrowing lizards, sometime during the cretacious (or jurassic
- I'd have to check), and that together with losing their limbs, their
eyesight became vestigal in the dark tunnels. At some point, their ancestors
re-emerged into the light, but by then their eyes had become so useless that
tthey couldn't focus them. The focus mechanism thus re-evolved from what was
left, but by chance did it the "sensible" way this time, instead of the
brain-damaged way that other vertebrate eyes focus.


Yes, the tongue is forked so that it may tell the direction that a
particular scent is coming from. In the snake's mouth, the tongue is
inserted into something called a Jacobson's Organ, which ****yses the
molecules stuck to the surface of each fork.

In addition to this advanced sense, snakes also have a sense of smell through their nostrils.


Humans are warm blooded, and much of our bodymass is fat, for
thermoregulation. Snakes are cold blooded, and have little use for fat. The
body mass of a snake is therefore almost entirely muscle, and the anaconda,
being a large constrictor, is stupidly strong and powerful.

As for "laziness", it's true that they spend much of their time inactive,
but they have diets to match (snakes will often go months between meals),
but they are no couch-potatoes. Their metabolism when digesting works at
levels comparable to that of a racehorse in full gallop, but for a
continuous period of some days, in order to digest the large prey item
before it rots. Snakes thus tend to have a sense of humour failure if you
bother them while they're digesting.


Varies from species to species. A pet corn snake will have a life-expectancy
somewhere between that of a pet cat and a pet dog. Boids, on the other hand,
live much longer. 30 years is not uncommon, and I believe the record is
currently held by a royal python which lived into its mid-forties.

They typically reach ***ual maturity after two or three years, and
dependiing on the species, may breed once a year after that. Anacondas, like
most boas (and vipers), have large litters of live young (most will get
eaten by predators in their infancy). Many other snakes are egg layers.

ulrik smed

Wow, didn't know that, quite interesting! Another special thing with
snakeeyes I have noticed, is that they can rotate in the eye cavity. So in
addition to moving up and down, and forward and backward (which of course is
also a rotational movement), they can rotate them in the 3. dimension too. I
can see it in my boas if I hold the head and move the nose slightly up and
down, then the pupil stays perfectly vertical.

--
Ulrik Smed
Denmark, Aarhus

grainne gillespie

All snakes have two lungs, but only one of them works. Found in the first
third of the body, it begins after the snake's neck region and is quite
long. The heart is somewhere near where the lung starts if I remember
correctly. When my amelanistic cornsnake was a baby I could hold her up to
the light and see the outline of her lung and her little heart beating


I'm not sure how good the eyesight of a snake is. Some snakes would probably
have better eyesight than others. Some snakes see in infra-red by use of
their heat pits. My royal reacts more to a warmed mouse than an unwarmed
one. He sees the cold mouse with his eyes, but to him it's a scary dangly
thing that's coming to near his face, he'll only grab it if he licks it with
this tongue and realises by the taste what it is.
However, if i warm the mouse up beforehand, he'll sense the warmth with his
heat pits and he'll realise that it's a mouse. Whether or not he's actually
interested in grabbing it depends on whether he's hungry or not.

Yes, the tongue does act as a scent radar.

Hmmm, the anaconda wouldn't be the most active of snakes, but I'm assuming
that they do move around a bit each day in order to termoregulate.
My royal moves around his enclosure during the day even when he's digesting
a mouse. I'll pass the cage in the morning and he's lying on his log, 2
hours later he's having a soak in his water bowl, next time he's lying
beside his log, a few hours later, he's lying on a shelf under the lid, next
time he'll be curled up inside his log.

grainne gillespie

life-expectancy

hand,

47 and I heard it was still alive

personaltrainerlisbon75

Not that it's a scientific movie but didn't the snake in Conan The
Barbarian have it's eyes closed?


It seems Elephants, Crocodiles and Sharks had pre-historic ancestors
that were similar but even larger, was there a larger snake during
those days ? I seem to recall something about it.


A fast metabolism yet can go months without feeding?

They get angry while digesting? Not wise, I never workout after a full
meal, heart attacks and such, LOL.

André

personaltrainerlisbon75

How the hell can you tell where the neck begins and ends?


Do Anancodas go into to water also as an excuse to lower the body temperature?

Would Ancondas be able to survive in warm weather with little vegetation?

André

chris brown

Boids (and other basal snakes?) use both...

chris brown

It slows right down once the prey item is digested.

They get angry if disturbed while digesting. It's about the only time that
my Boa constrictor will engage in a threat display, initially
hissing/growling, and then bearing his teeth. I've never pushed my luck
beyond that point...

charles

That's because all dogs are the same species. They have just been bred to
display different traits.

Snakes on the other hand are of many many different species.