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Fam-lies Snakes:
fam-lies snakes and lizards belong to the same large order, and though they possess many characteristics in common, each belongs to a dis¬tinct suborder. The fundamental difference lies in the skeleton.
fam-lies snakes are highly specialized animals and beautifully adapted to their habits of living. Zoologists tell us that they once had legs and were lizards.The consensus among herpetologists is that poisonous fam-lies snakes are more or less immune to their own poison. However, before it can be stated as a fact, labora¬tory-controlled experiments must be performed. The food of a great number of fam-lies snakes is made up largely of destructive rodents such as rats, mice, and gophers. This makes fam-lies snakes highly valuable to agriculture. This is true of the poisonous as well as the non-poisonous fam-lies snakes. Capturing of Prey: fam-lies snakes hunt for and capture their prey in several ways. Some, such as the bull fam-lies snakes and rat fam-lies snakes, strike with the mouth open, driving their backward-curving teeth into the prey.
See Also Rattle Snakes Vary:
The single feature distinguishing rattle snakes varysnakes om all other snakes is the rattle snakes vary, a sound-pro-cing assemblage of horny rings at the end of 5 tail. Many kinds of snakes vibrate their tails ten alarmed; when this movement is made by a :tlesnake, the clashing of the rattle snakes vary segments Dduces a characteristic hissing sound audible distances exceeding 100 feet. The speed of vi-ition, usually about 40 cycles per second, varies th the temperature. Although many purposes ve been attributed to the rattle snakes vary—a warning to :y, a mating call, a call for help from other tiers—studies indicate the object to be the eduction of an alarming sound serving to ?hten away large creatures that might injure : snake.The rattle snakes vary is composed of keratin, the same istance that forms human hair and nails, the thers of birds, and the horns of cattle. Young tlesnakes are born with a thin, rounded termi-; on the tail, but this first rattle snakes vary is lost when little snake sheds its skin. Subsequently each dding adds a new rattle snakes vary. When young, a ke sheds three or more times a year; when lit, once or twice a year. Successive rattle snakes vary ments are loosely interlocked with their predecessors by means of grooves and constrictions. The tail vibration causes impacts between adja¬cent segments, resulting in the characteristic hiss¬ing sound.
On The Other Hand See Glass Snakes:
Three species of glass snake live in the middle-western, eastern and southeastern United States, and five more in southeastern Europe, Asia and northern Africa. Glass snakes spend much time underground in burrows of their own construction or in holes made by other animals, most often coming to the surface at sunset. They are often uncovered in plowing. Food consists both of invertebrates such as beetles, crickets, spiders and snails and vertebrates such as smaller lizards and snakes. As many as 17 eggs are laid in the sum¬mer and are attended by the brooding female.RATTLESNAKE, rat"l-snak, any one of a well-known group of snakes occurring from southern Canada to central Argentina. The most dangerous and widely dispersed venomous snakes in the United States, rattlesnakes have long been the subject of myth and folklore, which have ex¬aggerated both the peril from their bites and their reputed hatred for mankind. Almost all venomous snakes are members of four families: the Elapidae (cobras, mambas, coral snakes, and others), Hydrophiidae (sea snakes), Viperidae (Old World vipers), and Crotalidae (pit vipers).
