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Serpent-Time Answer Key
Everyone knows that snakes first appeared in the Garden of Eden. The modern snake is the product of a large number of convergent evolutions, resulting in the modern mammal-snake, lizard-snake, crayfish-snake, worm-snake, amoeba-snake, and creationist snake, which denies the origins of all of them.
- Crayfish snakes (Liodytes) and worm snakes (Carphophis) are real, but properly related to other snakes, and not descended from crayfish or worms as described in the lecture. There are also legless lizards, which greatly resemble snakes, but are technically not snakes... though, you wouldn't make a fruit salad with a tomato, would you? Snakes, as we currently describe them, form a monophyletic group, meaning they all descend from a common ancestor.
Some other notable snakes include the cat snake, called Pantherophis; the water snake, called Hydrophis; the fat snake, called Crassophis; and the shat snake, which is known as Cacophis - or more commonly as the crowned snake, since it isn't quite done on the toilet yet. I think we'll need the air freshener for this one.
- Pantherophis is a genus containing snakes that are commonly called the rat snakes; many of the snakes called cat snakes are in the genus Boiga.
- Hydrophis snakes are called sea snakes, not water snakes. What an unfair world.
- Truth: snakes in the genus Cacophis are called crowned snakes. Link: Reptile Database - Cacophis squamulosus
Snakes have seven fingers, three eyes, four lungs, no teeth; a movable heart, a wandering soul, a diesel engine, and an instinctive preference for Russian literature. They reproduce by way of a two-headed penis-like instrument in males, which they use like a tuning fork on the female's body, locating their partner's reproductive opening by hitting middle C.
- Lizards, fellow squamates, do have three eyes - the two obvious ones, and a third pineal eye on the top of the head. However, snakes do not.
- Truth: Snakes have a movable heart. This is because they have no diaphragm, so their heart can shift inside the ribcage, especially when the snake swallows large prey. Link: Coleman et al. Variation of organ position in snakes (2019)
- Truth: Male snakes have a hemipenes, a structure with two heads that transfers sperm internally to the female. The appreciation of music in snakes, meanwhile, is unproven. O'Shea Snakes of the World (2023)
Meanwhile, there are snake species with no scales or eyes. There are also rattlesnakes without rattles, and some boas lack stomachs - instead digesting their prey using the power of truth and friendship.
- Scaleless snakes exist in the pet trade, having been bred to lack much of their protective outer covering - but there is no species with no scales as a rule.
- Earth-dwelling blindsnakes (Scolecophida) have small, ineffectual eyes, which are even covered by opaque scales - but they are still present.
- Truth: A species of rattlesnake only found on a small island, Crotalus catalinensis, has evolved to lack the warning tail-rattling that all other members of the genus use. This is possibly because there is simply no need for a rattle on a small island without large predators. Technically, this is also true in the sense that rattlesnakes can lose their rattles, since they're just a series of dead scales that are loosely attached and fairly easily broken off. Link: Reptile Database - Crotalus catalinensis
Snakes display a wide range of body shapes - the legged snake resembles a lizard, and the hoop snake rolls around like a cartwheel and lassos its prey. Cobras use their hoods like sails when swimming. Sidewinders learned to sidewind to tolerate the burning temperatures of the desert sand. The longest snake in Earth's history was the Titanoboa, which measured 42 feet long, until it hit an iceberg and sank. The smallest snake, called Micrurus, was microscopic, and only discovered through close examination of prehistoric amber.
- There are no legged snakes, though some have vestigal structures called "spurs" where their hind legs would be. There are legless lizards, though, which are often confused for snakes.
- The hoop snake, a folk monster, does not exist - I don't care what your grandpappy said he saw.
- Many snakes are excellent swimmers, but not sailors. And sidewinding - a method of locomotion that multiple species developed - is used in both sandy and muddy environments, and may instead have something to do with traction.
- Truth: The Titanoboa, an extinct snake that lived in the time between dinosaurs and humans, was in fact 42 feet long. Link: Gugliotta How Titanoboa, the 40-Foot-Long Snake, Was Found (2012)
- Micrurus is an extant genus of coral snakes. All are venomous and visible to the naked eye. A species of theeadsnake, Tetracheilostoma carlae, is the smallest known snake at about 4 inches.
As their name suggests, egg-eating snakes consume nothing but small mammals. Meanwhile, the primary diet of mud snakes is mud, and fox snakes hunt foxes. Snakes have been caught eating unusual things, like eggplants, computer mice, pipe cleaners, and caramel apples. Asian vine snakes are epicureans, selecting only the delectable eyes of their prey as meals, from which they also get all of their water.
- Egg-eating snakes, in the genus Dasypeltis, do eat eggs. Duh.
- Fox snakes, a few species in the Pantherophis genus, don't eat foxes, but they do smell like them.
- Truth: A spectacled cobra (Naja naja) was once found trying to digest two eggplants. Scientists believe the snake may have been attracted to the scent of the rotting plant. Link: Deshmukh et al Unusual feeding behavior by a spectacled cobra (2021)
- Asian vine snakes, Ahaetulla, are believed by local Sri Lankans to pluck out human eyes with their odd, pointy heads - in reality, they usually eat lizards.
Some snakes have unusual ways of attracting prey. The spider-tailed horned viper has an arachnid-like extension on its tail that it uses as a lure. Grass snakes rub pieces of grass together to attract their primary prey item, crickets. Saw-scaled vipers use their rough scales to wrap themselves around thin trees and break them, sending bird nests crashing to the ground. And sand boas eject small amounts of sand from a pocket in their mouths, firing at moths and locusts like a sniper.
- Truth: Pseudocerastes urarachnoides, the spider-tailed horned viper, is a real snake, and it does use its unusual tail for this purpose. When it was first discovered, scientists wondered if the tail was a tumor. Link: Reptile Database - Pseudocerastes urarachnoides
- Grass snakes (in the Natrix genus), saw-scaled vipers (in the Echis genus), and sand boas (in the Eryx genus) do exist, but don't behave in these ways.
All snakes are poisonous, and none are truly venomous, except for the tiger keelback, which is both. Coral snakes and harmless milksnakes can be differentiated by the common rhyme, "If red and black and yellow are shown, and you don't know what's found in your zone... please leave it the hell alone."
- Most snakes that are harmful to humans are best described as venomous, not poisonous, since they inject their venom through grooved or syringe-like teeth.
- Truth: Tiger keelbacks (Rhabdophis tigrinus) are in fact both venomous and poisonous. They borrow poison from their toad prey. Link: Reptile Database - Rhabdophis tigrinus
- This rhyme, while far better than the popular but misleading counterpart "yellow and black, friend of Jack...", does not differentiate coral and milksnakes.
Dangerous snakes aren't heartless, though; mother rattlesnakes lay square eggs to keep them from rolling out of their nests. Once the babies hatch, the rattlesnake mums then leave their young with a babysitter while they go out on a celebratory postpartum girls' night at a local bar.
- Rattlesnakes (Crotalus and Sistrurus) don't lay eggs - they give birth to live young - and no snake lays square eggs. Some seabirds, however, lay pointed eggs that don't roll off narrow ledges on rocky cliffs.
- Truth: Rattlesnakes have displayed complex systems of maternal care, including leaving their newborn snakes with a gravid (pregnant) mother while they rest, which increases their young's chances of survival. Really quite sweet for a feared creature! Greene Biology of the Vipers (2002)
Snakes and humans have a perfectly affable relationship, and humans are known to act completely rationally around snakes. Absolutely no unnecessary injuries and deaths occur on either side.
- A 2008 honourable mention entry on the website of the Darwin Awards, dedicated to commemorating ridiculous decisions that lead to an individual removing themselves from the human gene pool, claims a family tried to treat their mother's rattlesnake bite by Tasering her - twice. Somehow, she survived. However, the story is unconfirmed. Link: It's the cure that'll kill you
Snakes have been spotted in Antarctica, in my pants, and on the Space Shuttle Endeavour - as a mysterious snake-shaped UFO floating by in the vacuum of space that is almost certainly evidence for extraterrestrial serpentine life.
- Modern Antarctica is too cold for snakes (and most vertebrates). Its land used to be part of tropical supercontinents, though. If someone shows me a snake fossil discovered in Antarctic rock, I'll add that in as a fact.
- Truth: Franklin Story Musgrave, on a mission for NASA, saw a seven-foot wriggling shape that he described as snake-like. It was probably a piece of debris from human activities. Link: Story Musgrave on UFOs in space
Pope's pit viper was named because a breeding pair were once owned by John Paul II. Stiletto snakes were named because Christian Louboutin, the French fashion designer, found one in his trademark red-bottom shoes. Abraham Lincoln was fond of copperheads, so much so that posthumously, he became one. Herpers, people who look for snakes and other reptiles in their natural habitats, frequently contract herpes in the field, which they treat by wiping their genitals on the nearest patch of stinging nettles, a cure known as "natural acupuncture".
- Is the Church still unfriendly to snakes? Is the Pope a Catholic?
- Snakes have shown up in fashion, but not in these fashions.
- The bit about Abe Lincoln is meant to be a joke, but I guess it is true in a sense, except that the Oxford English Dictionary does not list "copperhead" or "copper-head" as a synonym for the United States penny, or any coin.
- Do not do this.
Any snake enthusiast can easily romance a new snake friend with cheesy pick-up lines, such as: "Call me a gopher snake because I could go for your snake any day of the week", "You must be a Russell's viper because you give me a hell of an erection", and "My anaconda don't want none unless you provide explicit verbal consent to look at your buns, hun".
If you are willing to coexist with slithering friends, snakes can be helpful in your backyard by providing an organic extension to your garden hose, and consuming ticks, which are just as trendy among snakes as popping bubble tea is among college students.
And that's the end of rhzartist's lecture!
The original format is taken from The Unbelievable Truth on BBC Radio 4, created by Graeme Garden and Jon Naismith, and hosted by David Mitchell. No copyright infringement, and only a little offense, is intended by the author rhzartist.
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Do not use content without my consent. Support new and local artists! Last updated 19 October 2024
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