Snakes: interesting facts. About snakes, their way of life, food. The most unusual snakes. What do snakes eat? What snakes eat snakes
Incredible Facts
Snakes don't have ears, but they can see remarkably well.
They don't have a nose, but they can pick up smells very clearly.
The fangs of venomous snakes are among the "most advanced systems biological weapons in the natural world."
Below are the most shocking and amazing abilities of these reptiles.
A snake can eat another snake that is longer than itself.
In order to finally understand how a king snake can eat another snake that is longer than itself, Kate Jackson (Kate Jackson) from the University of Toronto and her colleagues recorded on video and watched the development of events. king snake sharply attacks the victim, then squeezes his whole body like an accordion to let in "food". Later, when the deed is done, some undigested part of the dinner, she spits back.
The snake eats its offspring
As scientists found out in February 2009, many rattlesnake mothers eat some of their non-surviving children. Snakes have such a thing as "postpartum cannibalism" and in a study, mothers ate about 11 percent of their eggs and dead young. Why? "In this way, the rattlesnake recovers the energy expended, because during this period it is too exhausted to forage for its own food, and this is a dangerous activity that requires a lot of time and energy," says Kirk Setser, lead author of the study.
A snake can "fly" 50 feet
If the heavenly tree snake wants to move from one tree to another, it literally flies to it without going down. It would be more accurate to say that it "glides" through the air. In order to fly to another tree, they either fall from the branch or strongly repel it, so that, overcoming the height, they actively slide. In flight, they take an S-shape in order to stay in the air longer and get exactly where they need to be.
Pythons eat whole prey, including bones.
Adult pythons can live for months without food. But when they eat, they don't leave behind any waste. These snakes are adapted to suck calcium from the bones of their prey, making their food more nutritious. "Thus, they are physiologically set up for as long a period of 'fasting' as possible, stocking up on nutrients," says Jean-Herve Lignot, a specialist at Louis Pasteur University in France.
Cobras concentrating on your eyes
Cobra spitting is not actually spitting. This is a contraction of the muscles that compress the gland that produces the poison. With the help of this kind of "spitting" cobra venom can be sprayed up to a distance of 2 meters. If it gets into your eyes, the neurotoxins in the poison can blind you. Moreover, back in 2005, scientists discovered that cobras really aim at the eyes. However, this is not all. Cobra venom, as a rule, is not sprayed out in a streaming jet, but in a special geometric pattern, so it may well hit both of your eyes.
The smallest snake in the world fits on a coin
The smallest snake known to date was discovered in 2008 in Barbados. It is a little less than 10 cm long and thin, like spaghetti. "Some types of snakes are most likely protected from the process natural selection, so they didn't get too small, under the size limit, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to get food to feed their offspring," says Leptotyphlops carlae snake discoverer Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
Snakes can live for months without food and still grow!
Imagine being able to go without food for months and still burn fat, grow and feel great! Marshall McCue and his colleagues at the University of Arkansas haven't fed 62 snakes in their lab for six months, including pythons, rattlesnakes and a few other species. The snakes have visibly reduced their metabolism, some by 72 percent (!) in order to survive. Surprisingly, they have become longer in the process of burning their fat reserves. "These animals bring energy consumption to a completely new level' says Makku.
Poisonous snakes, along with non-poisonous reptiles, are eaten by many animals.
Here we see amazing examples the defenselessness of snakes, possessing a terrible poisonous weapon, which turns out to be invalid in the fight against some creatures. Such enemies of snakes can be found among mammals, birds, and, finally, among their own brethren - namely snakes. Let's start with the first. Well-known is the resistance of the hedgehog in relation to snake venom. The hedgehog, facing the viper, sniffs it from head to tail, not paying attention to the fact that it bites him in the muzzle. He only licks the wounds he received with his tongue. Then, having improved the moment, the hedgehog with a quick movement clings to the viper's head with its teeth, crushes it and begins to eat the snake killed in this way, without dismantling either poisonous teeth or poisonous glands. The hedgehog is not naturally affected by the viper's venom, so its bites do not cause him any significant harm. The lethal amount of viper venom for a hedgehog is forty the same doses for guinea pig. Other mammals eat snakes - weasels, martens, ferrets, foxes. AT warm countries their sworn enemy are the so-called pharaoh mice or mongooses, which cope with such a dangerous adversary as a spectacled snake. When fighting between them, the snake often wraps itself around the body of the mongoose. Despite the advantage of the position of the snake, coiled around the small body of the pharaoh mouse, this animal emerges victorious due to its extreme dexterity. He clings to the snake's head, crushes it with his teeth, and then devours it. Mongooses, like hedgehogs, are insensitive to poison. spectacle snake; they are killed only by an amount of poison that is 8 times the lethal dose of the same substance for a rabbit; the mongooses themselves are the size of a marten.
Many of the birds hunt snakes, and among them they also devour poisonous ones. The snake eagle, hawks, vultures, buzzards, storks and even crows exterminate these reptiles. The most dangerous for a snake is a bird living in Africa - a secretary. On her head there is a bunch of long feathers, giving the bird some resemblance to a clerk who put a pen behind his ear, which explains the name "secretary" given to her. The voracity of this bird can be judged by the fact that 3 snakes, 11 lizards, 21 small turtles were once removed from its goiter, not counting the remnants of insects. The secretary bird uses a special way of fighting snakes, which Brem describes in the words of one of the observers of this bird. “If the secretary caught up with the snake, and if it starts to defend itself, hisses and swells its neck terribly, then the bird opens one wing, covers its legs with it like a shield, hits the snake attacking it with it, jumps back and forth, making the most strange jumps. The secretary repels the biting of snakes with one wing and thereby tires his evil enemy, with the bend of the other wing he hits the snake, stuns it, then sometimes with his beak throws it into the air, bites through its skull, and finally, swallows it, having previously torn it apart ”(p. 765).
The secretary eats snakes whole with their poisonous teeth and glands. Probably he is by nature as little susceptible to the action of snake venom as barely or the pharaoh mouse. It should be noted that birds do not exclusively hunt poisonous snakes, but destroy them along with other reptiles.
Let us now see if snakes have enemies among their own kind. What happens if, for example, one viper bites another. The bitten one will not suffer any particularly noticeable damage, since viper venom does not affect vipers, just as the venom of a rattlesnake or cobra is harmless to them. However, the consequences will be different if a snake of one kind bites a poisonous snake of another kind. In this case, the poison is valid for reptiles. For example, the Brazilian rattlesnake - lachesis (up to 4 meters long, i.e. 6 arshins), deprived, like our muzzle, rattlesnake, devours others, both poisonous and non-poisonous snakes; likewise serpentine and asps, called coral snakes for the extraordinary and beauty of their color. Asp venom is also dangerous for other snakes.
However, neither the rattlesnake nor the asp can be allies of a person in the fight against poisonous snakes, since they themselves represent an extreme danger for him, which people used ... against people. In ancient times, asps were used in Egypt to execute criminals sentenced to death.
When observing the life, habits and customs of many snakes, a striking phenomenon was discovered - the ability of one American snake, which the natives call Mussurana, to kill their poisonous counterparts and then devour. This night snake, usually has a body length of 1 1/2 meters (2 arches), is found along the banks of rivers, streams, near swamps. It is harmless, because it has no poisonous device, and is a sworn enemy of various poisonous snakes, of which there are so many in Brazil, where the death of a person from a snakebite is not a rare phenomenon.
If mussurana is pitted at least with a rattlesnake, then both snakes twist into a ball, and the rattlesnake bites its opponent. However, its terrible poison, which quickly affects mammals, is not valid for Mussurana; she is by nature insured against it and does not pay the slightest attention to the bites inflicted on her by the rattlesnake. Meanwhile, she herself digs into his back with her teeth and, feeling the body of her enemy with a rapidly moving tongue, intercepts parts of the body with her jaws closer and closer to the neck of a poisonous snake. When it reaches the latter, then, bending in an arc, begins to twist the rattlesnake's head and thus dislocates its cervical vertebrae, kneads the brain, and the head poisonous enemy hangs helplessly down, while the rest of his body still makes convulsive movements. Such a fight ends soon if the venomous snake is small. Mussuran fusses about a strong opponent for a long time - sometimes 1 1 / 2 hours, until finally he can twist his head in the full sense of the word.
Mussurana necessarily eats a killed snake, starting to swallow it from the head. The tail of the deceased victim, which sticks out of its mouth for a long time, still makes convulsive movements. Mussurana devours without hesitation even such snakes that exceed the length of her body one and a half times. In this case, only half of the prey is swallowed, while the other half sticks out of the mouth until the first is digested.
What is the appetite of Mussurana and can it be of serious importance as a reliable ally of man in the extermination of poisonous snakes? This question can only be answered on the basis of direct observation of her life. In nature, it is rare, as it leads a hidden lifestyle. To study snakes in Brazil, a special institution arose, in which a “garden of snakes” was arranged - a place surrounded by a low stone fence, surrounded in addition by a ditch with water. They let snakes into this garden and observe their life and attitude towards each other.
Above Mussurana there were made tests to establish the number of snakes devoured by it. It turned out that in captivity, which snakes generally do not tolerate very well, she ate 81 poisonous snakes and 4 non-venomous snakes in 3 1/2 years. Thus, quite unexpectedly, nature gave man, in the person of Mussurana, a collaborator in the fight against poisonous reptiles.
Attention was drawn to such an amazing property, and in the garden just mentioned, they are trying to breed these useful snakes in order to later distribute them to in large numbers throughout Brazil, on whose coffee plantations snakes often bite people if they work barefoot. Mussurana lays from 8 to 16 eggs and lays down on them herself to prevent the embryos developing inside them from drying out and dying. After 4-6 months, small snakes come out, which immediately seek to hide somewhere under cover. Unfortunately, all attempts to raise young Mussurans and bring them to an adult state have not yet been successful, since they have not been able to attack the kind of food that they would eat in captivity. The hatched snakes stubbornly refused everything that was offered to them and eventually died of hunger.
What do snakes eat?
All snakes are predators, among them there is not a single type of eating plant food. The menu of snakes is very diverse, they eat almost everything that can be found in wildlife, and in this they are significantly superior to amphibians. Snakes prey on a wide variety of mammals (ranging in size from a tiny shrew to an antelope), birds, other reptiles, amphibians, and insects. They willingly eat eggs from the clutches of birds and their own fellow reptiles. Aquatic and semi-aquatic species are engaged in fishing and catching other aquatic animals.
shellfish
There are also snakes that specialize in feeding on mollusks. These are fat-headed snakes living in America and Asia. They feed almost exclusively on slugs and snails. They masterfully remove the latter from the shells: they insert the lower jaw into the shell and hook the “leg” of the snail with long curved teeth, and then, alternately working with the movably connected halves of the lower jaw, they move the body of the mollusk right into their mouth.
Ants
Ants feed on many blind snakes - small snakes living in the soil. They catch earth ants that come across in the passages and cracks in the soil. One common blind snake can eat 200 ants per day, while she prefers certain types of ants or their larvae. She emits a specific smell, thanks to which the ants do not touch her even in the anthill.
termites
Few species of reptiles specialize in feeding on termites. For example, one of the blind snakes is able to squeeze out the contents of the soft abdomen of a termite, leaving its chitinous shell.
snakes
Many reptiles prey on other members of their class. But the most dramatic and striking example is the predation of snakes in relation to other snakes. Many snakes that are not very picky about food can, on occasion, swallow one of the more small representatives snake kingdom. Even the well-known ordinary one, on occasion, can dine on a viper. However, there are more specialized species that feed only on lizards and snakes. This is a relatively rare copperhead in the center of Russia. This small snake preys mainly on lizards, but if it encounters a snake or viper of a suitable size, it will try to swallow them too. Finally, there is a very special group of snakes that feed mainly on other snakes. Among them is the world's largest poisonous snake - king cobra, or hamadryad. This Asian snake reaches five meters in length and specifically hunts for other snakes, including extremely poisonous ones. Interestingly, cobras and other asp snakes kill the snakes that have become their prey with their poison. At the same time, their poison effectively acts, for example, on vipers, while the poison of vipers is powerless against them. Among the serpent-eaters, there are those that are considered non-poisonous or have a weak poison (these include, for example, copperfish). Most bright representative of this group - mussurana, common in Central America. This pretty large snake(sometimes exceeds 2 m) preys mainly on large and strong pit snakes that are deadly to humans. In a sharp throw, the Mussurana tightly grabs its prey by the neck behind the head and wraps its body around it with lightning speed. After that, without opening the jaws, but gradually sorting through them, it captures the head of the victim in the mouth and gradually begins to swallow it. Mussurana itself is also poisonous, and its poison, although it does not kill the prey, noticeably weakens it. At the same time, the poison of the victims has practically no effect on the predator. A snake preying on other snakes has one indisputable advantage: it is certainly much easier to swallow a long, narrow and smooth creature than some kind of spherical egg or angular toad.
Grandmothers in the villages or those who have a cellar notice traces of snakes and let hedgehogs into the cellar. Hedgehogs are the first snake hunters. Snakes have many enemies. In nature, snakes are attacked by animals and birds. Monitor lizards eat snakes in the desert, falcons and hawks attack from above. A crocodile in water or on land will eat a snake. Wild boars feed on snakes in the forest.
In fact, reptiles have not so few enemies. First it predator birds such as hawk, falcon, stork.
Also, snakes do not disdain such animals as crocodiles, mongooses, hedgehogs, wild boars, monitor lizards.
And finally, the enemies are even between their brothers - snakes.
A hedgehog can eat a snake. By the way, he has an innate immunity against snake venom, which is higher than that of other animals.
Still do not disdain snakes and storks.
Hawks can also eat snakes.
A crocodile can eat a snake...and a crocodile snake.
This is not the whole list of those who can eat snakes.
The snake is not such a terrible monster, so as not to arouse the appetite of those who are faster and stronger. After all, even people in some places consider snake meat to be quite edible. Well, in the animal world there are a lot of snake lovers. First of all, any felines, although they will not attack snakes in full time, in the absence of other food, they will easily deal with a snake of a suitable size.
Many birds of prey also enjoy eating snakes. Moreover, it is enough for them to simply lift the snake in its claws higher and slap it against a stone in order to eat it without fear. These birds include hawks, falcons, storks, herons, and even a peacock does not really give in to reptiles. This is how the secretary bird deals with the snake.
Snakes, scientifically speaking, are a suborder of the class of reptiles of the scaly order. Snakes can be found on all continents of the Earth, except for cold Antarctica.
Among the snakes there poisonous species but most snakes are not venomous. Poisonous snakes use their venom primarily for hunting, and in self-defense, they use it only when absolutely necessary.
Many not Poisonous snakes first they suffocate their prey (a snake and a boa constrictor, for example), and only swallow the prey whole.
Anaconda
The largest snake in nature is the anaconda.
Again, scientifically speaking, anacondas are a genus of snakes consisting of several species. And the most large view the snake is giant anaconda, the photo of which you see above.
The largest giant anaconda caught weighed 97.5 kg with a length of 5.2 meters. This snake was caught in Venezuela in wild jungle. Residents of remote villages claim to have seen larger anacondas, but there is no evidence of the existence of larger specimens.
Like the other three types of anacondas, which we will discuss below, the giant anaconda most spends time in the water. Anacondas prefer bodies of water with no current or with a weak current. They are found in lakes, oxbow lakes, quiet rivers the Amazon and Orinoco basins.
Anaconda does not move far from water. Basically, anacondas crawl ashore to bask in the sun.
As we wrote earlier, anacondas belong to the subfamily of boas. Now let's talk about boas.
Boa
Boas are mostly large ovoviviparous snakes. The subfamily of boas is mainly known for the genus common boas. Most typical representative of this genus is the species of the same name "common boa constrictor". Individuals of this species reach 5.5 meters in length.
Boa constrictors strangle their prey, wrapping rings around it.
Boas of this species can have an unusual color, given that they are very unpretentious in keeping, they are often kept in terrariums.
But in terrariums it is popular to keep another type of boas - dog-headed boas.
Dog-headed boas are beautiful red-orange when young and bright green when mature. The length of this type of boas does not exceed three meters.
Another representative of boas with a bright color is the rainbow boa.
This type of boa constrictor is also popular with those who like to keep snakes at home.
Cobra
Some of the most famous snakes are cobras. Science identifies 16 species of cobras, many of which are quite large.
Cobra has an amazing skill, she can raise her body to a vertical position. If the cobra is large, then in this position it can be on a par with a person.
Cobras are poisonous snakes. Their bite can be very dangerous to humans.
Cobras are heat-loving snakes, they never live in countries where snow falls in winter.
Vipers
Vipers are the inhabitants of our latitudes. Vipers are poisonous snakes, the mention of which causes fear in people.
Vipers can have a very varied coloration. Each subspecies can be very different in appearance from other subspecies, while all subspecies of vipers have a characteristic zigzag on the back.
Vipers are active during the day, they love the sun and spend a lot of time basking in the sun.
If the viper smells a person, she prefers to retire. These are completely non-conflict snakes, and if you do not touch them
Already
One of the most peaceful snakes of our nature is already. This snake is easily recognizable by yellow spots on the head.
Already. 
They are no longer poisonous and there is no reason to be afraid of them. The snakes live on the banks of calm water bodies, such as lakes and swamps, backwaters and oxbow lakes.
Already. 
It is worth noting that there is a subspecies of snakes that lives far from water bodies.
Copperheads
Copperheads are small snakes that live on the edges of forests. Copperheads feed mainly on lizards, sometimes insects.
Copperhead. 
Although copperheads have poisonous teeth, their size is too small and their mouth is not capable of grabbing a person. Except for the finger. But even in this case, their bite does not pose a serious danger.
Outwardly, the copperhead looks like a small viper. The rhombuses and zigzag patterns on the back of the copperfish are very similar to those of the viper.
Polozy
Snakes are a generalized name for several types of snakes.
In our area, the Caspian snake is known - it is a fairly large snake, it is not poisonous, but very aggressive.
Caspian snake. 
It is because of the aggressiveness that they do not like snakes. Although they do not pose a danger to life, and when meeting with them, you can simply go on your way.
On the islands of Japan, you can find island snakes, which are distinguished by an unusual color. This species is a resident of the sea coast.
We will end our story with a description of one of the most big snakes planets - python.
The python can reach a length of four meters, which is about a meter less than the anaconda, but still impressive.
In spite of big sizes, pythons are very dexterous and quick-witted predators. Outwardly, they could be attributed to boas, but pythons are separate genus snake.
Pythons are native to Asia and Australia, and can also be found in parts of Africa. Pythons always live near bodies of water, although their life may not be connected with water. There are species of pythons that spend most of their time in the crowns of trees.
cat snakes
Cat snakes are a genus of small snakes that are distant relatives already. The genus consists of 12 species that are distributed in Africa, southern Europe and southwestern Asia.
One species lives in Russia - the Caucasian cat snake. These snakes in Russia can only be found in Dagestan.