Snakes


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tongue poking out.
I think she thought the snake was going to eat her for dinner!

|| || All snakes are cold blooded and [| carnivorous], that means they only eat meat such as small animals including lizards, other snakes, small mammals, birds, [|eggs] , fish, snails or insects.
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 * Did you know:

Because snakes cannot bite or tear their food to pieces, a snake must swallow its dinner whole. Its dinner is called ‘prey’ – what an animal eats. Most can swallow prey much larger than their own head!

Smaller snakes eat smaller prey. Young, juvenile pythons might start out feeding on lizards or mice and go on to eat small deer or antelope as an adult.

Snakes use smell to find their prey. It smells by using its [|forked tongue] to collect tiny particles in the air then passing them into the [|mouth]. This tells the snake where the food is, the smell and the taste. This is why a snake keeps poking out its tongue.

Snakes can range in size from the tiny, 10 cm long [|thread snake] to [|pythons] and [|anacondas] of up to 7.6 metres in length. They have no eyelids and their ears are on the inside of their body.

The [|skin] of a snake is covered in overlapping [|scales]. Snakeskin has a smooth, dry feel or texture.

Snakes shed their skin up to 4 times a year. This is called moulting.

The old, worn skin is peeled back like a sock turning inside out.

The snake wriggles out and a new, larger, brighter skin has formed.

Snakes have adapted to living in hot places like a desert, a jungle, the sea and in fresh water.

They live on every continent except Antarctica because it’s too cold. But don’t worry New Zealand doesn’t have any snakes living on land only sea snakes. || ||