Science & Snakes

I know, not some people's favorite subject! But I'm writing about them at work for a newsletter, so I have lots of tidbits.

Snakes have a lot of backbone, literally. Depending on the species, a snake has between 180 and 400 vertebrae and almost as many ribs. To put that in perspective, we have around 30 vertebrae.

Andrea, about 4/5 of the world's snakes aren't poisionous. What a relief.

There's one known species of snake (the Brahminy blind snale) that can reproduce "parthogenetically," without fertilization by the male. All the snakes that hatch this way are females with identical genetic code to their mother.

Ok, there's lots of fascinating things about snake senses, but I don't want to torture anyone...