Snakes
Vocabulary: scales, brumate, Garter Snake, carnivorous, predators, prey, milky,
transparent, cloaca, nourish, hinge.
S
nakes are reptiles. Reptiles have scales
and all reptiles except snakes, have claws.
They are cold-blooded vertebrates. In
the winter in cold climates, they
brumate.
In Burns Bog there are Garter Snakes. These
snakes are not poisonous. If they are scared,
they make a very bad smell. They are good
swimmers and can hunt for food in ponds
and streams.
Garter snakes eat birds’ eggs, tadpoles and
small frogs, small mammals, slugs, worms
and insects. They are carnivorous and they are predators. They only eat live
food.
Garter snakes are also prey to raptors like eagles and
hawks, and some wading birds like herons. Burns
Bog’s Sandhill Cranes like to eat snakes too, as do
bullfrogs, foxes, raccoons and coyotes.
Snakes can eat prey larger
than their head because
they can ‘unhinge’ the
bottom jaw bone from the
top.
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We can’t do that. Our jaws have a hinge that cannot be
detached. Look at the picture of a human skull. Can you see
where the top and the bottom of the jaw meet? Try to find
this place on your own head. Open and close your mouth
while you try, you should be able to feel it. You will
probably find it just in front of the halfway point between the top and bottom
of your ears.
Try putting your hands together as though you were
making a crocodile’s head (1).
Now keep the base of your hands together, while
opening your hands, as if your crocodile were opening
its mouth (2). That’s how our jaws are attached - top
to bottom.
Imagine that your hand crocodile could detach the top
jaw from the bottom. Now it can open as wide as its skin
will allow (3).
1
2
3
A snake’s ribs are only attached to
their backbone, and not at the
front, so that their stomachs can
expand if they have eaten
something big. Our ribs are
attached front and back.
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Try the same thing that you did with your hands, but with your elbows. Put
your elbows together and your fingertips. Try to push them apart so that you
make as much space as possible between them. This is a bit like our ribcage,
joined at front and back.
Now ‘unstick’ your fingertips. Your ‘ribs’ can spread much further.
Garter snakes do not have fangs – poisonous snakes have fangs – but they do
have teeth. Their teeth curve backwards so that prey cannot wriggle out.
Their teeth feel like the Velcro fastenings on some shoes.
Snakes do not have eyelids. They have a seethrough scale that protects their eyes. When they
are about to shed their skin, these scales turn
milky.
Snakes shed their skins in one long,
snake-shaped piece. But the skin is
actually inside out. Try taking off your
socks by rolling them down from the
top until they come off your feet.
Your socks will be inside out, just like
a snake’s skin. You shed your skin too,
but you shed it a few cells at a time, so you never see your human cells. If
you shed like a snake, your grown-ups would come into your room one
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morning and find a whole inside out you-shaped skin. It wouldn’t be the same
colour as your skin though, it would be transparent.
Snakes do have tails! On the
underside of their bodies, the
scales are much bigger. They
have to be able to slither along
the ground, and the large scales
help them to do this. If you
could see the snake’s skeleton,
you would see that the ribs end but the backbone keeps on going. This is the
tail. On the snake’s body, there is an opening before the tail starts. This is
called the cloaca. The cloaca is where the snake’s waste comes out and for the
females, where the eggs come out.
F
emale garter snakes are much bigger than males. Some snakes lay eggs,
but garter snakes give birth to live young. This is not the same as when
mammals give birth to live young.
The way to think about garter snakes is that they make eggs, but they keep
them inside their bodies until the snakes are ready to hatch. The ‘eggs’ do not
have hard shells, or even leathery shells, but a soft bag or sac.
When mammals produce babies, the baby is inside its mother and attached to
her through the umbilical cord. The mother feeds the baby and removes its
waste until the baby is ready to be born.
Garter snakes, snakes that lay eggs, and birds, all make an egg or egg sac with
the baby inside, but it is not attached to the mother, even when it is inside
her body. The egg or egg sac has everything it needs to nourish the baby until
it hatches.
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Snake Round-up!
Which of these would a Garter Snake eat?
Draw something a snake would eat…


…and something it wouldn’t eat

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True (T) or False (F)?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Garter Snakes are poor swimmers.
Garter Snakes are carnivores.
Garter Snakes have teeth.
There are Rattlesnakes in Burns Bog.
Female Garter Snakes lay eggs.
Make up a question for each of these answers …
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
A reptile
It means it can’t control its body temperature from inside.
Inside out.
No, it has tiny, backwards facing teeth that help to keep its prey in.
Because its ribs are only joined to the backbone.
Instead they have a see-through scale that protects their eyes.
They keep the young inside their body until they are ready to be born.
The females.
Yes, they do!
10. Brumation.
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