| Saturday, May 24, 2008 |
| Reptile Facts - 1 |
There are 8,240 species of reptiles in the world, inhabiting every continent except Antarctica.
Reptiles are cold-blooded, or "ectothermic," animals, which means that they depend on external sources, such as the sun, to maintain their body temperatures. Since they don't burn energy to heat internal "furnaces," reptiles eat 30 to 50 times less food than do birds and mammals (warm-blooded animals) of similar sizes.
Only a few hundred of the world's 3,000 snakes are venomous. In the United States, only rattlesnakes, copperheads, cottonmouths, and coral snakes are poisonous. More Americans die each year from bee and wasp stings than from snake bites.
Averaging ten to 12 feet in length, the king cobra is the largest venomous snake in the world. It is also the only known snake that builds a nest for egg incubation.
Depending upon the size of the meal, anacondas can go several months between meals.
The emerald tree boa can strike a bird or small mammal in complete darkness. The pits along the lips of most boas and pythons, and the nostril-like cavities of pit vipers, are infrared heat receptors. Snakes use these pits to sense the location of anything that differs in temperature from its surroundings by as little as 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit. |
posted by Reptile Fellow @ 12:20 AM  |
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