Snakes World

For almost 30 years, the Ellen Trout Zoo and director Gordon Henley have worked to bring back North America’s rarest snake, the Louisiana pine snake. They haven’t had much luck yet, and experts say the snake may become extinct if efforts to save it don’t show success soon.

In the early 1980s, Ellen Trout Zoo became the first zoo to breed this nonpoisonous snake. Then they stopped in the late 1980s because nobody wanted the snake babies. Then they restarted two years ago. The U.S. Forest Service now collects snakes for the zoo’s breeding program. The zoo has been unable to breed the wild snakes but plans soon to attempt to breed them with captive snakes. Any offspring will be returned to the wild.

Over the past two years, researchers have captured only six of these snakes in Texas, then releasing two back into the wild. Scientists do not know why the population decreased. One theory is that recent forest conservation efforts have led to fewer wildfires, which then led to fewer gophers, which in turn led to fewer snakes.

Alabama police say that the person who removed 22 tree boa snakes from a garden shed was simply concerned about the welfare of the reptiles. Jacob Brooks of Prallville, Alabama, filed a theft report when he returned home and found his pets missing, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. The Amazon tree boas had total value of $10,000. Police Chief Alfred Wadsworth said that no criminal charges will be filed in the case. He said that the motive for the removal of the snakes was to get them to a place with an appropriate temperature.The survivors were returned to Brooks, a hobbyist who breeds the snakes and sells them online. The tree boas ranged in length from 2 feet to 6 feet. They are constrictors and do not deliver a venomous bite.

For all of us snake lovers, we know that snakes are fascinating and useful. For those people who dislike and fear snakes, here is something to keep in mind. Snakes keep the rat populations under control. A sharp decline in the population of snakes due to ecological changes can harm the agriculture sector, as the population of rats and other rodents will go up. It’s just another reason to appreciate this incredible reptile.

Did you know that the snake is said to be one of the first reptiles on Earth? Snakes played a major role in mythology. The common snake is called the ’snake’, and any mythological snake is often referred to as a ’serpent’. Many people think of snakes as generally poisonous, dangerous and even a threat to mortality. This is certainly not true in all cases. There are several types of snakes. Many snakes are not poisonous.Venomous snakes use their fangs to either kill or immobilize their prey, using venom and saliva to achieve this. Poisonous snakes are classified into four families. There are the Elapids, Viperids, Colubrids and Hydrophiidae.

Do you know what the most poisonous snakes are? It is the Elapidae family, also known as elapids. The black mamba and the fierce snake are two examples. All elapids are poionous. They are found mostly in the tropical parts of the world. They have hollow fangs that are used to inject venom into their prey. Doesn’t that sound frightening? The Elapidae snake produces neurotoxic venom. What does neurotoxic venom do?  It goes straight to the nervous system of its prey. Other elapids are the Australian copperheads, kraits, king cobras, coral snakes, and of course, the cobras. They are the most lethal of all snakes.

What is the biggest snake? This question comes up more than any other regarding snakes. Let’s face it, people are fascinated with size. Add to that the curiosity and the mystery surrounding snakes, and you have the ever persistent question. So the answer to the question is that it depends on whether you are referring to the length of the snake or the weight. If you look in the records there is some controversy over which snake holds the world’s record for size. The dimensions that have earned the anaconda the title of king is its total body weight The sheer physical bulk of it is amazing. The other snake that competes with the anaconda for the title of World’s Biggest Snake is the Asiatic Reticulated Python. The python holds the world’s record for length of a snake, with the longest ever measured at 33 feet. Even though the longest python is longer than the record-holding anaconda, the girth of the anaconda is far bigger. Anacondas in the jungles of South America can grow as big around as a grown man! So there you have it. The anaconda is the heaviest, and the reticulated python is the longest.