Although when we think of snakes with their nimble body, deficiency of limbs and awesome flexibility, they appear to have no bones, nothing farther from reality.
Snakes do have bones and tons of them. Snakes like animals belong the vertebrate household, meaning they have a spine.
An adult human has 206 bones, in several sizes and shapes. Snakes, on the other hand, can have 400 or more bones based upon the species.
But, snakes contrary to most mammals including humans just have a couple types of bones, the skull, jawbones and the backbone using its vertebrae and ribs.
It’s this unique and simple design of the skeleton that provides snakes their recognizable form and awesome versatility, and capability to maneuver almost on any surface.
Due to their distinct body shape that their internal organs can also be somewhat different. In ladies, the throat occupies the of the human body, and the rest of the organs such as kidneys, lungs, liver, liver and the stomach are elongated in shape.
Snake skull and jawbones
To allow them to swallow prey far larger than its own head, snakes have an extremely complex skull structure, together with many joints. These special features enable snakes to eat prey up .
The exceptionally technical jawbones are loosely attached to the skull using some rather stretchy ligaments. The jaws are separated into 4 elements not two like humans they are not fused together on front.
These bones can proceed independently, so snakes can start their mouth wide downwards but also sideways. If a snake eats it moves the jaws on each side, then with its teeth to hold and push prey into its mouth.
They also have a little tube located in the base of the mouth that enables the snake to breathe while eating their prey.
Snake backbone
The snake’s elastic backbone contains several vertebrae with two ribs attached to every one, except at the tail, which has no palate.
In snakes, the ribs don’t join like ours but rather have complimentary ends because snakes lack a breastbone. This allows them to extend the ribs when the snake ingests prey.
The ribs can also compress in certain species, such as every time a cobra creates a hood as a threat display pulling the top ribs upward. It’s quite a sight if the king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) raises its body and stretches it is hood. Instead, the snake flattens himself pulling in his ribs at a defensive mechanism.
Vestigial Limbs in snakes
Most of us know that snakes do not own legs, right? That’s not correct.
Snakes descend out of lizards and countless years ago some lizards born with bigger chunks discovered that in some environments this has been an advantage. While this attribute was passed into another generation the members of this group were created with shorter legs, and without legs.
Today snakes don’t have limbs as we understand them, however a few python and boa species have vestigial hind legs called pelvic spurs. These are either useless or used to perform tasks even though they are poorly suited to do.
These guys are usually very small or absent in females and also more developed in males. Men restrain these legs and then use them courtship to maintain the females.
