Snakes

Snakes are elongated legless carnivorous reptiles of the suborder serpents. Like all sum mates snakes are ectothermic’ mniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. To accommodate their narrow body’s snakes paired organs appear one in front of the other instead of side by side and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs about 25 times independently via convergent evolution leading to many lineages of legless lizards and snakes. Legless lizards resemble snakes but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears which snakes lack although this rule is not universal. The long reptile that has no limbs or eyelids or a cold and ruthless person or a long and skinny wire that can be used to clean out a drain. Although the sunshine state provides a home for 50 or so different types there are only really 6 species of dangerous snakes in Florida. These have venomous bites which can harm humans and they should be avoided. Generally speaking if you encounter a snake and you are unsure whether it is dangerous or not you should avoid it. Snakes in Florida are not generally aggressive and won’t normally attack you if unprovoked. In fact most of the time they will attempt to flee if you go near them. On the rare occasions when they don’t flee because they are sunning themselves for instance under no circumstances should you attempt to handle the snake especially if you are unsure if it is venomous or not. This also goes for dangerous snakes that may have only recently died which can still give you a venomous snake bite reflexively. This dangerous snake is found in the area of Apalachicola river as wells in west of the Florida panhandle. There are 2 types of cottonmouths found in Florida the Florida cottonmouth and the eastern cottonmouth they can be distinguished by their markings and the geographical locations where they are found. The bite of a cottonmouth is painful and can be fatal if not treated. If they feel threatened they will coil their bodies display their fangs and making ready to bite. They are not usually aggressive but some males can be very territorial on occasion. A dry bite is a bite by a venomous animal in which no venom is released. Dry snake bite is called venomous snake bite without envenoming. Dry bites can occur from all snakes but their frequency varies from species to species.