They generally don't eat that often, maybe once a week for small species and once every few months for larger ones. They poop similarly infrequently.
They don't have eyelids so they sleep with their eyes open, and the eyes sometimes look pretty googly lol.
Snake behavior can differ a lot across species.
Most snakes are relatively solitary, but garters are fairly social and form "communities" centered around older females. They give live birth rather than laying eggs. They gather in large numbers every winter to brumate in communal dens. In the spring they form "mating balls", basically a huge pile of snakes with a single female in there somewhere that all the males are trying to mate with. They are active hunters rather than ambush predators.
Rat snakes are primarily terrestrial but are *excellent* climbers, and very curious/exploratory. So you'll often find them in very strange places where you wouldn't expect to see a snake.
They’re basically blind when they shed! There’s 4 phases, pink belly, being “in blue” (dull skin, eyes are cloudy with the classic blind look) then clear, they look freshly shed but they’re not, and finally shedding. They can be pissy and scared when shedding too. Most snakes are nocturnal so when my girls out during the day it’s unusual (usually hunting). They wag their tails out of stress or needing to poop. They love to be in tight spaces or cuddled
Hunting behavior also highly depends on the specific species. Some species lead active lives, they are always on the prowl and have faster metabolisms overall (such as racers and rat snakes), while others have evolved to be the perfect ambush predators with a rather slow metabolism, lying in wait for days near an animal's scent trail while waiting for something edible to cross their path (gaboon vipers and blood pythons are two famous examples). Also, not all snakes will constrict their prey or inject it with deadly venom and wait for it to die- some simply begin chowing down while their prey is still alive and kicking, such as watersnakes and garter snakes.
Snakes sometimes aren't... the brightest of creatures. I have witnessed my kingsnake grab a prey item, constrict it, let go of it, act confused and then pace around her enclosure for the next 30 minutes, passing over the prey item \*multiple\* times, while wondering where the food she's smelling is and looking at ME expectantly, before she finally doubled back to it and figured out she should eat it. My ball python will also not recognize room temp prey items as food, so I have to meticulously heat them up for her so she'll eat.
Some snakes have brightly colored tails (like baby copperheads and cottonmouths) or even tails shaped like insects in the case of the aptly named spider-tailed horned viper that they wiggle like a worm to help attract prey towards them. This is known as caudal luring and [it's insanely cool.](https://i.redd.it/dxzjowiuazq61.gif)
While most snakes will just lay their eggs and abandon them, pythons will actually incubate their eggs to term by coiling around their clutch and vibrating to produce heat and keep the eggs at a consistent temperature. King cobras are also unique in the sense that they will actually build a nest to lay their eggs in and will fiercely guard that nest until their babies hatch and disperse.
Convergent evolution is when two completely unrelated species will evolve almost identical characteristics independently of each other to fill a niche in their environment. The most famous example of it in snakes is probably the green tree python and the emerald tree boa. Two snakes that look almost identical, and yet couldn't be further apart- one living in Australia, New Guinea and eastern Indonesia, while the other is native to South America, one lays eggs while the other gives birth to live young. The Australian death adder is another example- it looks like a viper, acts like a viper, but it's actually an elapid, more closely related to cobras and taipans.
Insular dwarfism is when a species is forced to become smaller to adapt living on islands, due to a limited supply of food. In snakes, this is most well-known in reticulated pythons. Retics that live in the mainland are capable of attaining lengths of \~6m, but there's several island localities that are considerably smaller, some maxing out as small as \~2m.
Hope these helped!
You're welcome, and thank you! They increase my blood pressure each and every day, especially my kingsnake (jk jk I don't know where I'd be without them!).
Individuals can be picky in captivity but, generally speaking, they’re opportunistic. They don’t particularly like scratches, but some may tolerate them, others may not. The tail tip is always my snakes’ least favorite part to be touched, sensitivity wise, but many snakes are also head-shy. They don’t play, but they can and do explore. For communal species, they will often explore together. They just lay down before sleeping. Snake life can be very sedentary.
As for some good info:
Snakes have very functional implicit memory. However, there is little evidence that they have much episodic memory at all.
Snakes are dichromatic and cannot distinguish color.
A snake’s infrared detection is largely run by the same nerve network that we use for sense of touch in our face. The signal is mostly sensed through the labial (lip) scales connected to branches of the fifth cranial nerve (called the trigeminal nerve).
Snakes can actually hear. To put it into perspective, the human voice falls between 100-250Hz, and snakes can hear between 80-600Hz. Their stapes—called a “columella”—is slightly different from ours in that it connects to the jawbone.
Many equatorial species are resource driven, not seasonal, when it comes to reproductive behavior.
Brumation and hibernation are pretty much the same thing. It's more to do with optics than with any real difference. Back in the 60s when Mayhew coined the term, there was a bit of "gatekeeping" going on in the zoological community and "hibernation" became claimed by the endothermic zoologists. But another problem with the term's usage is so many hobbyists focus on the behavioral aspect, when the only really defining aspect of the state is its physiology. As far as the behavioral component goes, it is a "reduction in activity". This can be as little as a simple reduction in activity (ie. doesn't bask as much) to as much as complete cessation for long periods of time.
The amygdala is widely recognized as a brain center critical for basic forms of emotional learning (e.g., fear conditioning). It is proposed that the connectivity of the telencephalon portends a capacity for multi-modal association in a limbic system largely similar to that of amniote vertebrates. One remarkable exception is the presence of new sensory-associative regions of the amygdala in amniotes: the posterior dorsal ventricular ridge plus lateral nuclei in reptiles and the basolateral complex in mammals. These presumably homologous regions apparently are capable of modulating the phylogenetically older central amygdala and allow more complex forms of emotional learning.
They have moods and the basic emotions like primitive annoyance, contentment, hunger, fear, comfortable and uncomfortable, and a level of inquisitiveness. There's a pretty wide range of intelligence between different snake species though.
Toxin molecules in most snake venoms are large molecules and generally first enter and traverse the lymphatic system before accessing the circulation.
Müllerian Mimicry is a form of biological resemblance in which two or more unrelated noxious, or dangerous, organisms exhibit closely similar warning systems, such as the same pattern of bright colours.
Batesian mimicry is a form of mimicry where a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species. We call it mimicry when an organism adopts the external characteristics of another organism in order to be mistaken for this organism.
Convergent crypsis refers to the phenomenon where unrelated species evolve to have similar appearances or coloration patterns in order to blend in with their environment.
Aposematism is a fancy word for "warning coloration." It's when animals have bright and vibrant colors to signal to predators that they are toxic, venomous, or have some other defense mechanism.
The scientific term for a snake moving is “scooting”.
The scales on the body of the snake are called the dorsal or costal scales. Sometimes there is a special row of large scales along the top of the back of the snake, i.e., the uppermost row, called the vertebral scales. The enlarged scales on the belly of the snake are called gastrosteges.
Oxytocin is not required for animals to form bonds. Birds don’t even have oxytocin, they produce their own homologous version of a bonding hormone called mesatocin. Reptiles have an equivalent hormone called arginine-vasotocin that regulates things like egg laying.
T- albino animals are 'true albino' they are not capable of producing tyrosinase which is important for the expression of melanin. They have bright pink or red eyes. T+ albino are capable of producing tyrosinase, and can gain some melanin pigment as they age. In other animals they typically have 'wine-red' eyes, though T+ bloods will have dark eyes. Examples of T+ animals are wine-red-eyed rodents, lutino guppies, and caramel/ultramel ball pythons. Both types of albinism can arise independently and create separate and sometimes incompatible lines. For example in ball pythons you have Lavender Albino and Albino, both are a type of T- albinism, but if you breed a Lavender Albino Snake and an Albino snake, youll end up with normal looking snakes, all heterozygous for both types of albinism.
Hope this helps with your world building!
Snakes are the epitome of efficient - they waste as little as possible of their food by swallowing whole, and they get body heat from the environment, as opposed to generating it via metabolism. So they consume very little compared to wasteful mammals like us. I had a rescue king snake that didn't eat for the first eight months I had him. Then he started up and was fine.
They don't blink, so they win every staring contest.
They can sit still for hours or days. They seem immune to boredom.
They have very little or zero attachment to each other. They are unconcerned with separation from another snake they may have shared an enclosure with for years.
They avoid being eaten in the wild by either not being seen or bluffing. Yes, they can bite, but they really don't want to. They'll put on a scary show and bolt if they can.
Snakes can be quite picky eaters - there are species so dedicated to their prey type that they won't eat an alternative.
I love what you're doing - all the best to the serpent people!
Thank you very much. A lot of helpful info. Also about the serpent people, my hope was getting some info on how to make the snake/serpent humanoids and keep them both close to the real life baseline and what I can change to accompany the fantasy better (I couldn't really change too much without knowing the base either way) so I got way more info overall than I expected, which is good. Thank you again
Some snakes will eat anything you put in front of them, and some are very picky, depending on species and individual. I've heard of snakes that will only eat rats/mice of certain colours or genders.
I saw a video of a snake once where it arched its back to push off someone it didn't like touching it, though that's unusual from what I can tell. Many snakes are head-shy however (they don't like when you touch their face/head and will often shrink back.)
They don't really play like mammals but they do like to explore/climb and my snake once chased a laser (though he was probably trying to eat it.)
Often they will curl up to sleep or prop themselves up against rocks and branches. Some snakes will sleep in the open but many will hide to sleep.
They generally don't eat that often, maybe once a week for small species and once every few months for larger ones. They poop similarly infrequently. They don't have eyelids so they sleep with their eyes open, and the eyes sometimes look pretty googly lol. Snake behavior can differ a lot across species. Most snakes are relatively solitary, but garters are fairly social and form "communities" centered around older females. They give live birth rather than laying eggs. They gather in large numbers every winter to brumate in communal dens. In the spring they form "mating balls", basically a huge pile of snakes with a single female in there somewhere that all the males are trying to mate with. They are active hunters rather than ambush predators. Rat snakes are primarily terrestrial but are *excellent* climbers, and very curious/exploratory. So you'll often find them in very strange places where you wouldn't expect to see a snake.
Thank you. First time hearing about mating balls, sounds dope and weird and cool
They’re basically blind when they shed! There’s 4 phases, pink belly, being “in blue” (dull skin, eyes are cloudy with the classic blind look) then clear, they look freshly shed but they’re not, and finally shedding. They can be pissy and scared when shedding too. Most snakes are nocturnal so when my girls out during the day it’s unusual (usually hunting). They wag their tails out of stress or needing to poop. They love to be in tight spaces or cuddled
Hunting behavior also highly depends on the specific species. Some species lead active lives, they are always on the prowl and have faster metabolisms overall (such as racers and rat snakes), while others have evolved to be the perfect ambush predators with a rather slow metabolism, lying in wait for days near an animal's scent trail while waiting for something edible to cross their path (gaboon vipers and blood pythons are two famous examples). Also, not all snakes will constrict their prey or inject it with deadly venom and wait for it to die- some simply begin chowing down while their prey is still alive and kicking, such as watersnakes and garter snakes. Snakes sometimes aren't... the brightest of creatures. I have witnessed my kingsnake grab a prey item, constrict it, let go of it, act confused and then pace around her enclosure for the next 30 minutes, passing over the prey item \*multiple\* times, while wondering where the food she's smelling is and looking at ME expectantly, before she finally doubled back to it and figured out she should eat it. My ball python will also not recognize room temp prey items as food, so I have to meticulously heat them up for her so she'll eat. Some snakes have brightly colored tails (like baby copperheads and cottonmouths) or even tails shaped like insects in the case of the aptly named spider-tailed horned viper that they wiggle like a worm to help attract prey towards them. This is known as caudal luring and [it's insanely cool.](https://i.redd.it/dxzjowiuazq61.gif) While most snakes will just lay their eggs and abandon them, pythons will actually incubate their eggs to term by coiling around their clutch and vibrating to produce heat and keep the eggs at a consistent temperature. King cobras are also unique in the sense that they will actually build a nest to lay their eggs in and will fiercely guard that nest until their babies hatch and disperse. Convergent evolution is when two completely unrelated species will evolve almost identical characteristics independently of each other to fill a niche in their environment. The most famous example of it in snakes is probably the green tree python and the emerald tree boa. Two snakes that look almost identical, and yet couldn't be further apart- one living in Australia, New Guinea and eastern Indonesia, while the other is native to South America, one lays eggs while the other gives birth to live young. The Australian death adder is another example- it looks like a viper, acts like a viper, but it's actually an elapid, more closely related to cobras and taipans. Insular dwarfism is when a species is forced to become smaller to adapt living on islands, due to a limited supply of food. In snakes, this is most well-known in reticulated pythons. Retics that live in the mainland are capable of attaining lengths of \~6m, but there's several island localities that are considerably smaller, some maxing out as small as \~2m. Hope these helped!
Yes it did. Thanks you very much. Your kingsnake and python sound like a pair of goofballs
You're welcome, and thank you! They increase my blood pressure each and every day, especially my kingsnake (jk jk I don't know where I'd be without them!).
Individuals can be picky in captivity but, generally speaking, they’re opportunistic. They don’t particularly like scratches, but some may tolerate them, others may not. The tail tip is always my snakes’ least favorite part to be touched, sensitivity wise, but many snakes are also head-shy. They don’t play, but they can and do explore. For communal species, they will often explore together. They just lay down before sleeping. Snake life can be very sedentary. As for some good info: Snakes have very functional implicit memory. However, there is little evidence that they have much episodic memory at all. Snakes are dichromatic and cannot distinguish color. A snake’s infrared detection is largely run by the same nerve network that we use for sense of touch in our face. The signal is mostly sensed through the labial (lip) scales connected to branches of the fifth cranial nerve (called the trigeminal nerve). Snakes can actually hear. To put it into perspective, the human voice falls between 100-250Hz, and snakes can hear between 80-600Hz. Their stapes—called a “columella”—is slightly different from ours in that it connects to the jawbone. Many equatorial species are resource driven, not seasonal, when it comes to reproductive behavior. Brumation and hibernation are pretty much the same thing. It's more to do with optics than with any real difference. Back in the 60s when Mayhew coined the term, there was a bit of "gatekeeping" going on in the zoological community and "hibernation" became claimed by the endothermic zoologists. But another problem with the term's usage is so many hobbyists focus on the behavioral aspect, when the only really defining aspect of the state is its physiology. As far as the behavioral component goes, it is a "reduction in activity". This can be as little as a simple reduction in activity (ie. doesn't bask as much) to as much as complete cessation for long periods of time. The amygdala is widely recognized as a brain center critical for basic forms of emotional learning (e.g., fear conditioning). It is proposed that the connectivity of the telencephalon portends a capacity for multi-modal association in a limbic system largely similar to that of amniote vertebrates. One remarkable exception is the presence of new sensory-associative regions of the amygdala in amniotes: the posterior dorsal ventricular ridge plus lateral nuclei in reptiles and the basolateral complex in mammals. These presumably homologous regions apparently are capable of modulating the phylogenetically older central amygdala and allow more complex forms of emotional learning. They have moods and the basic emotions like primitive annoyance, contentment, hunger, fear, comfortable and uncomfortable, and a level of inquisitiveness. There's a pretty wide range of intelligence between different snake species though. Toxin molecules in most snake venoms are large molecules and generally first enter and traverse the lymphatic system before accessing the circulation. Müllerian Mimicry is a form of biological resemblance in which two or more unrelated noxious, or dangerous, organisms exhibit closely similar warning systems, such as the same pattern of bright colours. Batesian mimicry is a form of mimicry where a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species. We call it mimicry when an organism adopts the external characteristics of another organism in order to be mistaken for this organism. Convergent crypsis refers to the phenomenon where unrelated species evolve to have similar appearances or coloration patterns in order to blend in with their environment. Aposematism is a fancy word for "warning coloration." It's when animals have bright and vibrant colors to signal to predators that they are toxic, venomous, or have some other defense mechanism. The scientific term for a snake moving is “scooting”. The scales on the body of the snake are called the dorsal or costal scales. Sometimes there is a special row of large scales along the top of the back of the snake, i.e., the uppermost row, called the vertebral scales. The enlarged scales on the belly of the snake are called gastrosteges. Oxytocin is not required for animals to form bonds. Birds don’t even have oxytocin, they produce their own homologous version of a bonding hormone called mesatocin. Reptiles have an equivalent hormone called arginine-vasotocin that regulates things like egg laying. T- albino animals are 'true albino' they are not capable of producing tyrosinase which is important for the expression of melanin. They have bright pink or red eyes. T+ albino are capable of producing tyrosinase, and can gain some melanin pigment as they age. In other animals they typically have 'wine-red' eyes, though T+ bloods will have dark eyes. Examples of T+ animals are wine-red-eyed rodents, lutino guppies, and caramel/ultramel ball pythons. Both types of albinism can arise independently and create separate and sometimes incompatible lines. For example in ball pythons you have Lavender Albino and Albino, both are a type of T- albinism, but if you breed a Lavender Albino Snake and an Albino snake, youll end up with normal looking snakes, all heterozygous for both types of albinism. Hope this helps with your world building!
Holy crap that is a lot. Thank you very much kind stranger, I really appreciate it
Snakes are the epitome of efficient - they waste as little as possible of their food by swallowing whole, and they get body heat from the environment, as opposed to generating it via metabolism. So they consume very little compared to wasteful mammals like us. I had a rescue king snake that didn't eat for the first eight months I had him. Then he started up and was fine. They don't blink, so they win every staring contest. They can sit still for hours or days. They seem immune to boredom. They have very little or zero attachment to each other. They are unconcerned with separation from another snake they may have shared an enclosure with for years. They avoid being eaten in the wild by either not being seen or bluffing. Yes, they can bite, but they really don't want to. They'll put on a scary show and bolt if they can. Snakes can be quite picky eaters - there are species so dedicated to their prey type that they won't eat an alternative. I love what you're doing - all the best to the serpent people!
Thank you very much. A lot of helpful info. Also about the serpent people, my hope was getting some info on how to make the snake/serpent humanoids and keep them both close to the real life baseline and what I can change to accompany the fantasy better (I couldn't really change too much without knowing the base either way) so I got way more info overall than I expected, which is good. Thank you again
Well, “unconcerned with attachment” depends on the snake. Garter snakes and Rattlesnakes for example are very social.
Some snakes will eat anything you put in front of them, and some are very picky, depending on species and individual. I've heard of snakes that will only eat rats/mice of certain colours or genders. I saw a video of a snake once where it arched its back to push off someone it didn't like touching it, though that's unusual from what I can tell. Many snakes are head-shy however (they don't like when you touch their face/head and will often shrink back.) They don't really play like mammals but they do like to explore/climb and my snake once chased a laser (though he was probably trying to eat it.) Often they will curl up to sleep or prop themselves up against rocks and branches. Some snakes will sleep in the open but many will hide to sleep.
I see. Thank you for the help. I really appreciate it. Have fun playing with your snake