106 Unique Facts About Snakes | Legacy Facts

# The word snake originates from the proto-Indo-European root "sneg", which means "to crawl, creeping thing."

# The term serpent comes from the proto-Indo-European root "serp", which means "to crawl, creep."

# Snakes range in size from the tiny, 10 cm-long thread snake, to the reticulated python of up to 6.95 meters (22.8 ft) in length.

# Over 20 families of snakes are currently recognized, consisting of about 500 genera and around 3,400 species.

# Of the approximately 725 species of venomous snakes worldwide, 250 can kill a human with a single bite.

# Five species of flying snakes are recognized. Growing to 4 feet, some types could glide through the air for up to 330 feet.

# Scales cover every inch of the body of a snake, including its eyes. Scales are thick, tough pieces of skin made from keratin, which is the same material human nails and hair are made from.

# Snakes do not have eyelids meaning they can't close their eyes. They also cannot blink and ultimately they have to sleep with their eyes open.

# Some snakes could partially breathe through their skin allowing them to dive deep underwater.

# Anacondas can hold their breath underwater for up to 10 minutes. In addition, anacondas have eyes and nostrils similar to crocodiles which can poke above the surface of the water to increase their stealth and hunting prowess.

# Sea snakes can dive more than 300 feet into the ocean with their paddle-shaped tails.

# Snakes have flexible jaws allowing them to eat bigger prey than their head.

# Snakes can open their mouth up to 150 degrees.

# Some snakes have more than 200 teeth. The teeth are not used to chew but point backward in order to prevent prey from escaping the throat of the snake.

# Snakes use their tongues to smell.

# Not all snakes have fangs but only those who kill their prey with venom have them. They fold them back into the roof of the mouth when their fangs are not in use (except for the coral snake, whose fangs do not fold backward).

# The fangs of a snake normally last for around 6 to 10 weeks. A new one grows in its place when a fang wears out.

# Snakes can sense the approaching animals by detecting faint vibrations in the air and on the ground.

# The warmer the body of a snake, the faster it can digest its prey. A snake usually requires 3 to 5 days to digest its meal. Digestion can take weeks for very large snakes, such as the anaconda.

# Soon after a meal, if a snake is threatened, it will always regurgitate its food so that it can quickly escape the perceived threat. The digestive system of a snake can dissolve everything except the hair, feathers, and claws of a prey.

# The vertebral column of the snakes comprises between 200 and 400 vertebrae.

# Even hours after death, a dead snake's decapitated head still can bite. Usually, these kinds of bites contain huge amounts of venom.

# Powerful acids in the stomachs of snakes mean that if Alka-Seltzer is given they will explode.

# After consuming a large meal, some snakes were known to explode. A 13-foot python, for instance, blew up after it tried consuming a 6-foot alligator. The python was found with the tail of the alligator protruding from its mid-section. Its head was missing.

# All snakes are exclusively carnivorous.

# Usually, snakes only need to eat 6 to 30 meals every year in order to be healthy.

# A two-headed snakes' heads fight over food if there is no blocking of one another's vision while being fed.

# Some snakes can survive without a meal for a period of 2 years.

# Female adders can go out without eating for 18 months.

# While snakes don't have external ears or eardrums, their skin, muscles, and bones carry vibrations of sound to their inner ears.

# Snakes that are used in snake charming performances respond to movement, not sound.

# Sonoran Coral Snake, when threatened, farts instead of hissing or rattling.

# Snakes are immune to the venom of their own close relatives, but not to the venom of other species of snakes.

# Some venomous snakes have died after biting and poisoning themselves by mistake.

# Pigs are immune to snake venom, a trait shared by mongoose, honey badgers, and hedgehogs.

# 70 percent of species of snakes lay eggs while the remaining 30 percent give birth to young ones.

# Anacondas mate with 1 female and up to 12 males in a giant "breeding ball," and they stay in that position for more than a month.

# Some snakes, komodo dragons, sharks,, and turkeys are capable of "virgin births," that is, asexual reproduction.

# The Brahminy Blind Snake, or flowerpot snake, is the only snake species that consists solely of females and does not require a mate to reproduce. It's also the world's most widespread terrestrial snake.

# The amount of food that a snake consumes will decide how many offspring it will have. The Arafura file snake eats the least so each decade it lays only one egg.

# Snakes can live from 4 to over 25 years depending on the species.

# Scorpion venom is the most expensive liquid on Earth at $38,858,507.46 per gallon far surpassing cobra venom in Thailand, which is $152,835.82 per gallon.

# A mysterious, new "mad snake disease" is causing captive pythons and boas to tie themselves in knots. Other symptoms include "stargazing," when snakes stare upward for a long time. Snake experts believe the fatal disease is caused by a rodent virus.

# Rattlesnake rattles are made of keratin rings, which are the same substance as human hair and fingernails. Each time a rattler sheds its skin, it adds a new ring.

# If two rattlesnakes fight, they do not use their fangs to poison one another.

# Pit vipers, pythons, and some boas have deep grooves on the snout with infrared-sensitive receptors allowing them to "see" the radiated heat of warm-blooded prey.

# The northern copperhead snake smells like cucumbers.

# Elephant trunk snakes are almost completely aquatic. They can't slither because they lack the broad belly scales that help other snakes move on the ground. Instead, the elephant trunk snakes have large knobby scales that hold onto slippery fish and constrict them underwater.

# Some snakes can poop whenever they want to avoid predators. They make themselves so dirty and smelly that predators will run away.

# There's a rare snake called a sunbeam snake, which has iridescent rainbow-colored scales.

# Pythons kill their prey by tightly wrapping around it and suffocating it in a process called constriction.

# "King" in the name of a snake signifies that it preys on other snakes.

# The term "cobra" means "hooded." On the back of their hood, some cobras have large spots that look like eyes to make them seem to intimate even from behind.

# It is believed that king cobra is one of the most intelligent of all snakes. Additionally, unlike most snakes who don't care about their young, king cobras are careful parents who defend their eggs from enemies and protect them.

# The longest ever recorded snake is a reticulated python. It can reach a length of over 33 feet, which is big enough to swallow a pig, deer, or even a person.

# The longest venomous snake in the world is the Asian King cobra. It can grow up to 18 feet in length, rear up almost as high as a human, growl loudly, and can inject enough venom to kill an elephant.

# Brahminy blind snakes are the world's smallest snakes, and they can be as small as 2 1⁄2 inches long. Often, they are mistaken for earthworms.

# The anaconda is the heaviest snake on earth. It weighs more than 270 kg (595 pounds) and can grow to more than 30 feet (9 m) long. It was known to eat caimans, capybaras, and jaguars.

# The inland taipan is the most toxic snake in the world, which means that it has both the most toxic venom, and when it bites, it injects the most venom. Its venom sacs contain enough poison to kill 80 people.

# The death adder has the world's fastest strike of any snake. It can attack, inject venom, and, in less than 0.15 seconds, return to the striking position.

# The Black Mamba is the world's fastest snake and it can move up to 20 kmph (12 mph).

# The black mamba had a 100 percent fatality rate before the invention of anti-venom and its victims would be dead in around 20 minutes.

# The Gaboon viper has the longest fangs of any snake in the world, with a length of around 2 inches (5 cm).

# The black mamba is thought to be the world's most advanced species of snake. It has the most advanced venom delivery system of any snake. It can strike twelve times in a row, though only one bite is enough to kill a human.

# The beaked sea snake is the world's deadliest sea snake and is actually two look-alike species. Both look identical and are equally deadly.

# The venom of the boomslang snake causes you to bleed from all holes of your body.

# The muscle that causes a rattlesnake to rattle fires 50 times a second for up to 3 hours or 520,000 rattles without stopping.

# A single drop of venom of the Beaked Sea Snake can kill three adult humans.

# The Mozambique spitting cobra can spit venom over eight feet away. It can spit from any position, including lying or raised on the ground. It prefers targeting the eyes of its victim.

# The grasshopper mouse eats scorpions, snakes, centipedes, and even other mice.

# Brown tree snakes have eaten the entire island population of native birds and bats when they were inadvertently introduced to Guam from the Solomon Islands. The Government dropped dead mice packed with Tylenol into Guam's dense jungle canopy to fight the snake's population.

# Except on Antarctica, snakes are found on every continent.

# There is an island in Brazil where it is illegal for people to go: it has up to five snakes per square meter.

# In Australia, one can find the top ten deadliest snakes.

# Inland taipan, the eastern brown snake, the coastal taipan, the tiger snake, and the black tiger snake are the top five most venomous snakes worldwide.

# The snake is viewed as the incarnation of deceased relatives in many parts of Africa.

# A large population of Rattlesnakes existed in the Bronx until the early 1900s. When farmers let their pigs hunt them down, they were wiped out.

# In Ireland there are no snakes because being cold-blooded animals, the snake could not survive the frozen ground during the ice age.

# In North America, the garter (gardener) snake is the most common snake. This snake is also a reptile of the state of Massachusetts. While previously believed to be nonvenomous, garter snakes actually produce a mild neurotoxic venom that is harmless to humans.

# New Zealand does not have any terrestrial (land) snakes.

# Bill Haast of Florida, also known as the "Snake Man," had been bitten at least 173 times by poisonous snakes. For more than 60 years, he injected himself with snake venom daily to build up immunity. With his blood rich in antibodies, he saved countless lives and lived to be 100.

# It is believed that snakes evolved between 112 and 94 million years ago from four-legged reptilian ancestors. Some snakes like pythons and boas, still have traces of back legs.

# The Titanoboa was the largest, longest, and heaviest snake ever discovered which lived 60 million years ago.

# Brooklyn Papyrus, a medical papyrus dating from ancient Egypt (450 B.C.), is the oldest written record that describes snakes.

# In 2014, the naturalist Paul Rosolie tried to be the first person to survive being swallowed by an anaconda. Although he wore a specially designed carbon fiber suit equipped with a breathing system, cameras, and a communication system, he eventually called off his stunt when he felt the anaconda was breaking his arm as it tightened its grip around his body.

# The world's largest Chinese restaurant seats 5,000 people, employs over 300 cooks and transfers 700 chickens and 200 snakes in a week.

# A Brazilian pit viper's venom is used in medicine to treat high blood pressure.

# Snake wine is an alcoholic beverage produced by infusing whole snakes into rice or grain alcohol, which according to traditional Chinese medicine is considered to be an important curative.

# A cobra blood wine can be ordered from the restaurant menu in Vietnam. The waiter takes a live cobra, kills it on the spot, drains the blood into a shot glass of rice wine, and tops it off with the still-beating heart of the cobra for you to gulp.

# When a live hamster (as a meal) was offered to a snake in the Tokyo Zoo, they two became "best friends."

# A plane from San Diego to Miami delivering anti-venom to a man bitten by a highly poisonous snake accompanied by two jet fighters was the only aircraft allowed to fly on 9/11 after the attacks.

# Every year, snakes kill about 100,000 people.

# In 2009, after their pet Burmese python escaped its cage and squeezed the two-year-old to death, a Florida couple was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter of their daughter.

# Every year, more people are killed by bees than by snakes.

# A cobra bitten a Nepalese farmer named Mohammed Salmodin in 2012, and he bit back the cobra. The cobra died, and as if nothing had happened, he went about his daily business without symptoms. After pressure from family, neighbors, and police, he finally agreed to go to the hospital.

# The abnormal fear of snakes is known as ophidiophobia.

# About a third of all adult human beings are ophidiophobic, suggesting that humans have an innate, evolutionary fear of snakes.

# 51 percent of Americans fear snakes, most than any other thing in the world.

# The "Cobra Effect" is where the problem is actually made worse by a solution to a problem.

# Even today in India, snakes are worshipped as gods. A lot of women pour milk on snakes, despite the aversion of snakes to it.

# Since 1876, there have been 14 recorded fatalities from native adder bites in Britain. It may take up to a year to recover from one bite.

# In Lebanon, military commandos eat live snakes, a tradition to show their strength and daring.

# Google sent an e-mail to its employees on April Fool's day of 2007 warning that a python was loose in the facilities. That was not a joke.

# In 2006, a 30-year-old Indian woman who claimed to have fallen in love with a snake married the reptile.

# A pastor died in 1983 during a Pentecostal service after handling a rattlesnake in timber. About 29 years later his son died in the same exact way.

# In 2011, two farmers fed up with demands for bribe dumped over 40 live snakes at a local tax office in India.

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