Snake

Hand made and hand painted.

Materials: high quality native hardwood (maple and elm), finished with environmentally sound oils and lacquers

Size: 120 mm L (4.7 inches)

Made in Germany

Facts:
Snakes are elongate legless carnivorous reptiles that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like lizards, from which they evolved, they have loosely articulated skulls and most can swallow prey much larger than their own head.

There are over 2,900 species of snakes ranging as far northward as the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia and southward through Australia and Tasmania. Snakes can be found on every continent (with the exception of Antarctica), dwelling in the sea, and as high as 16,000 feet (4,900 m) in the Himalayan Mountains of Asia. There are numerous islands from which snakes are conspicuously absent such as Ireland, Iceland, and New Zealand. They range in size from the tiny, 10 cm long thread snake to pythons and anacondas of up to 7.6 m (25 ft) in length. Snakes are thought to have evolved from either burrowing or aquatic lizards during the Cretaceous period.

Snakes use smell to track their prey. It smells by using its forked tongue to collect airborne particles. The fork in the tongue gives the snake a sort of directional sense of smell and taste simultaneously. The snake keeps its tongue constantly in motion, sampling particles from the air, ground, and water analyzing the chemicals found and determining the presence of prey or predators in its local environment.

The part of the body which is in direct contact with the surface of the ground is very sensitive to vibration, thus a snake is able to sense other animals approaching through detecting faint vibrations in the air and on the ground.

All snakes are strictly carnivorous, eating small animals including lizards, other snakes, small mammals, birds, eggs, fish, snails or insects. Because snakes cannot bite or tear their food to pieces, a snake must swallow its prey whole. The body size of a snake has a major influence on its eating habits. Smaller snakes eat smaller prey. Juvenile pythons might start out feeding on lizards or mice and graduate to small deer or antelope as an adult, for example.