60 Fun Facts About Snake

Snakes are found on every continent except which one?

They also range as far north as the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia, and a few species live in the sea.

What does a snake do with its forked tongue?

The two tips give directional information about a smell, and even the anaconda's tongue works efficiently underwater.

The vomeronasal organ in the roof of a snake's mouth is commonly known by which anatomist's name?

The organ was actually described by Frederik Ruysch before 1732; the Danish anatomist it is named after only came along in 1813.

Instead of movable eyelids, what covers a snake's eyes?

The scale is called a brille or spectacle, and it is shed along with the rest of the skin, which is why a snake's eyes turn cloudy before a molt.

How does a snake shed its skin?

The old layer comes off like a sock turned inside out, and a snake may do it four or five times a year.

Roughly how many species of snakes are there?

The great majority are non-venomous, and venomous species use their venom mainly to subdue prey rather than for defence.

Which snake is the longest venomous snake in the world, with a record length of 5.85 metres?

Its genus name Ophiophagus means snake-eater; it preys mainly on other snakes, including pythons and cobras.

The world's longest venomous snake is the only one known to do what with its eggs?

The female gathers leaf litter into a mound and guards it throughout incubation, unusual devotion in a group that mostly abandons its eggs.

The black mamba is not actually black. What part of it gives the snake its name?

It gapes to show the inky lining as a threat display, and it is Africa's longest venomous snake.

Which shy Australian snake is considered the most venomous in the world by the LD50 test in mice?

A single bite is estimated to carry enough venom to kill more than 100 adults, yet the snake lives in remote semi-arid country and is placid by nature.

What is the longest snake species alive today?

A captive one in Kansas City named Medusa is recognised by Guinness as the longest living snake ever kept in captivity, at 7.67 metres.

Which South American snake is the heaviest in the world?

Females are far bigger than males, averaging around 4.6 metres against about 3 for the males.

The Barbados threadsnake, one of the world's smallest snakes, was compared by its discoverer to the width of what?

Herpetologist Blair Hedges described it in 2008 and named it after his wife Carla; adults average about 10 cm and eat termites and ant larvae.

Titanoboa, the largest snake ever found, was discovered in a coal mine in which country?

The fossils came from the Cerrejón mines and the animal, which lived about 60 million years ago, may have reached 12.8 metres and over 1,000 kg.

Which of these countries genuinely has no native snakes?

Iceland and New Zealand are also snake-free, though sea snakes occasionally drift into New Zealand's northern waters.

What is the scientific verdict on the legend that St Patrick banished every serpent from the island?

A Roman writer noted the island's lack of snakes back in the third century, long before Patrick, and the earliest snake-banishing story was told about a different saint.

Brazil's Ilha da Queimada Grande is closed to the public because it is home to thousands of what?

The critically endangered pit viper lives nowhere else and eats birds; only the Brazilian Navy and vetted researchers may land.

The rattle on a rattlesnake's tail is made of what?

A new segment is added each time the snake sheds, and the eastern diamondback, the largest species, can reach 2.4 metres.

Rattlesnakes are native only to which part of the world?

The 36 species range from southern Canada to central Argentina and are the leading cause of snakebite injuries in North America.

What does the small pit in front of each eye on pit vipers such as rattlesnakes sense?

The pits work as a sixth sense for finding warm-blooded prey in the dark and may even help judge its size.

Snakes have no external ears. Which body part do they rest on the ground to pick up vibrations in stereo?

The two halves of the jaw move independently, so a snake with its chin on the ground can tell which side a vibration is coming from.

Snake venom is a modified form of what?

The venom glands are modified parotid salivary glands, sitting behind and below each eye inside a muscular sheath.

Albert Calmette's 1890s antivenom, the first sold commercially, was produced by immunising which animals?

Calmette used Indian cobra venom at the Pasteur Institute; today's US pit-viper antivenom CroFab is made in sheep instead.

About what fraction of adults fear snakes, making ophidiophobia one of the commonest phobias?

Psychologists have found people learn to fear snakes and spiders far more readily than flowers or electrical outlets.

In Greek myth, which hero beheaded Medusa, the Gorgon with snakes for hair?

He kept using the severed head as a weapon, since it could still turn onlookers to stone, before giving it to Athena for her shield.

What is the ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail called?

One of its earliest appearances is on a shrine enclosing Tutankhamun's sarcophagus, and it later became a favourite of alchemists.

The Rod of Asclepius, the symbol of medicine, shows how many snakes wrapped around a staff?

The two-snake, winged caduceus belongs to Hermes and is often misused for medicine, especially in the United States.

The rearing cobra worn on the crowns of Egyptian pharaohs is called what?

It represents the cobra goddess Wadjet, and paired with the vulture of Nekhbet it stood for the union of Lower and Upper Egypt.

In Norse myth, the world-encircling serpent that bites its own tail is which god's child?

Its siblings are the wolf Fenrir and Hel, and the moment it releases its tail is one of the signs that Ragnarök has begun.

The board game Snakes and Ladders originated in which country as a lesson about virtue and vice?

It was called Moksha Patam, ladders were virtues and snakes were vices; the American version became Chutes and Ladders in 1943.

A cobra in a snake charmer's basket appears to dance to the pungi. What is it really responding to?

The practice was banned in India under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 and has almost died out there.

The Snake genre exploded after a version was preloaded on which company's mobile phones in 1998?

The genre actually began with a 1976 arcade game called Blockade, a two-player game that never used snake terminology.

Kaa, the hypnotic snake in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, is what kind of snake?

In Kipling's stories he is a wise ally of Mowgli, more than 100 years old; it was Disney that turned him into a villain who tries to eat the boy.

Which actor starred in Snakes on a Plane (2006)?

The film became an internet phenomenon before release, and the studio added five days of reshoots to work in fan feedback.

Roughly how many snakes were supplied for Raiders of the Lost Ark's Well of Souls scene?

Most were harmless grass snakes and pythons; the cobras were kept behind plexiglass, and the shoot was delayed when the RSPCA was called.

The Roman poet Horace and later tradition say Cleopatra died from the bite of what kind of snake?

No snake was found with her body, only tiny puncture marks on her arm, so some historians suspect a poisoned needle instead.

The Burmese python has become a notorious invasive species in which US state?

More than 90,000 were imported for the pet trade between 1996 and 2006, and a 5.79-metre record specimen was caught in Big Cypress National Preserve in 2023.

The 'king' in kingsnake refers to what habit, one it shares with a much larger Asian namesake?

Kingsnakes are non-venomous but will hunt and eat rattlesnakes, copperheads and cottonmouths.

The boa constrictor is unusual among animals for what reason?

Pet keepers even call it a BCC, short for Boa constrictor constrictor, to tell it apart from other boas.

Python regius, the royal python of West Africa, gets its common English name from what behaviour?

It is also called the royal python, from its Latin species name regius, and is native to West and Central Africa.

North American hognose snakes are famous for what defensive trick?

They roll onto their backs, let their tongues hang out and release a foul musk to sell the performance.

Spitting cobras aim their venom at what part of an attacker?

Studies found they hit the face with about 90 percent accuracy; the venom is harmless on intact skin but can blind if it reaches the eye.

Snakes of the genus Chrysopelea in Southeast Asia are known for what ability?

They flatten their bodies by flaring their ribs to create lift, which is why they are called flying snakes.

African snakes of the genus Dasypeltis have adapted to eat only what?

They are one of only two snake groups with that specialised diet and can smell whether an egg is rotten before swallowing it.

The Afrikaans name of the boomslang, a rear-fanged African species, translates as what?

The herpetologist Karl Schmidt died in 1957 after a bite from a juvenile he assumed could not deliver a fatal dose.

The Snake is which animal in the twelve-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac?

The same twelve animals also mark two-hour periods of the day, and the month of the snake falls around May and June.

Which locomotion, used by desert vipers, lifts sections of the body clear of loose sand?

The same trick is used by some Southeast Asian snakes to cross tidal mudflats, and the tracks show the body is still while it touches the ground.

Pythons and boas retain tiny remnants of hind limbs. What are they called?

The little clawed digits are used to grasp during mating, and python embryos briefly grow full leg buds before development stops.

The World Health Organization estimates roughly how many people are bitten by snakes each year?

The WHO listed snakebite envenomation as a Neglected Tropical Disease in 2017; deaths are concentrated in rural Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The Sanskrit 'nāga', for the semi-divine serpents of Hindu and Buddhist lore, most often means which snake?

The word can also mean cloud, mountain or elephant depending on context, and nāgas are often shown with a halo of cobra hoods.

Which king destroyed the bronze serpent Moses had raised because people were worshipping it?

By then it had a name, Nehushtan, and 2 Kings says the Israelites had been offering sacrifices to it.

The oldest preserved descriptions of snakes are found in which ancient Egyptian document?

Modern snake diversity arose in the Paleocene, after the extinction that ended the Cretaceous.

Tetrapodophis, a 113-million-year-old fossil hailed in 2015 as a four-legged snake, was found in which country?

A 2021 study reassigned it to the dolichosaurs, a group of extinct marine lizards.

Pit vipers' heat-sensing pits can detect temperature differences as small as what?

Boas and pythons instead have rows of smaller labial pits along the upper lip.

Snakes have been found as high as 16,000 feet in which mountain range?

They also range north of the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia and into the sea.

Copperheads and cottonmouths can switch from sexual reproduction to which asexual mode?

Embryos develop without fertilisation; the Colombian rainbow boa can do it too, producing WW females.

Which group is the only one observed travelling backwards by reversing its undulation?

All snakes can undulate forward with backward-moving waves; reversing it is unique to this group.

Which mode of snake locomotion is the slowest and the only one needing no sideways bending?

Concertina movement is used in tunnels, where the snake braces its rear against the walls and extends forward.

An unusual population of Oregon garter snakes is effectively poisonous thanks to toxins from eating what?

The Asian genus Rhabdophis pulls off a similar trick with toad toxins stored in neck glands.

How do boa constrictors and green anacondas, unusually for reptiles, nourish their developing young?

Full viviparity with a placenta and yolk sac is otherwise found in animals such as requiem sharks.