🦁 Animal world 🐊 Reptiles and amphibians

The snake

📖 In short

The snake is a long animal with no legs, its body covered in dry scales. It moves by sliding on its belly, and coils up easily. Snakes have no eyelids; clear scales cover their eyes, so their eyes are always open.

🤩 Did you know?

The smallest snake is only about 15 centimeters long.
The black mamba is one of the fastest snakes, moving at 11 kilometers an hour.
The fangs of the Gaboon viper can be 5 centimeters long.
Snakes hear through vibrations in the ground, because they have no outer ears.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Smelling with its tongue

A snake flicks out its forked tongue a lot, not to scare you but to pick up smells from the air, then pulls it back into its mouth to learn what's around it.

🔍 Swallowing prey whole

A snake doesn't chew its food but swallows it whole. Its jaw is very stretchy and opens very wide, so it can swallow an animal bigger than its head, then go for days without eating.

💡 Shedding its skin

As a snake grows its skin gets too tight, so it peels it all off in one go and comes out in shiny new skin, leaving the old one behind like an inside-out sock.

🎯 Venomous or not

Most snakes aren't venomous, like the python, which wraps around its prey and squeezes. But some are venomous and dangerous, like the cobra. So never go near any snake, and tell a grown-up if you see one.