WildlifeControl

About 19.2 adult Americans have a phobia (fear of something). One of the most common phobias is Ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes. This is often attributed to evolutionary causes, personal experiences, or cultural influences.

Snakes are elongated, legless, carnivorous reptiles covered in overlapping scales. Consensus, on the basis of comparative anatomy, is that snakes descended from lizards.

Snakes have skulls with many joints, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. Although some possess venom potent enough to disable a prey, non-venomous snakes either swallow prey alive or kill by constriction.

Contrary to popular belief, snakes are not slimy. Snake skin has a smooth, dry texture.

A snakes eyes are always open, but snakes do have eyelids that are transparent scales that remain permanently closed. When a snake sleeps, the snake can either close it's retina, or bury it's face among the folds of it's body.

Snakes do what is called moulting, which is to shed it's old and worn skin 1 - 4 times a year in favor of a new skin underneath. This helps get rid of parasites such as mites and ticks. The skin is shed in a single piece, like a sock being turned inside out.

Snakes smell by using their forked tongue to collect airborne particles then passing them to the "Jacobson's organ", located in their mouths, for examination. The fork in the tongue gives snakes a sort of directional sense of smell and taste simultaneously. Snakes also keep their tongues constantly in motion, sampling particles from the air, ground and water. They analize the chemicals found and determine the presence of prey or predator in the local environment.

All snakes are strictly carnivorous - eating small animals, lizards, other snakes, small mammals, birds, eggs, fish, snails or insects. After a meal, the snake becomes corment while the process of digestion takes place.

Most species of snakes lay eggs, but most will abandon the eggs shortly after laying them.

In the U.S., all species of venomous snakes are pit vipers (has a heat sensing organ between its eye and nostril) except the coral snake. In North America, there are three major species of pit vipers. They are the cottonmouth, copperhead and rattlesnakes.

To produce anti-venom, a mixture of venoms of rattlesnakes, copperheads and cottonmouths is injected into the body of a horse in ever-increasing dosages until the horse is immunized. Blood is then extracted from the immunized horse, the serum is seperated and further purified then freeze dried. When needed, it is reconstituted with sterile water and becomes anti-venom.

Did You Know?

Snakes will most often enter a home with a mice problem. If you are having a snake problem, you may have a mice problem too!