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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Snakes

What is a snake? Which snake is the most venomous or the longest? How can I identify venomous snakes in the US? These frequently asked questions (faqs) about snakes (and many more) are answered here.

What snakes are venomous/poisonous?

What snakes are venomous? Which are poisonous? Is there a difference? Yes, there is! While there are ~1,300 venomous species of snakes in the world, there are only around 4 species that are poisonous.

Snake Fangs 101

What are snake fangs?  How do they differ from the other teeth in the snake's mouth?  Are there different kinds of snake fangs?  Fangs are structures that have evolved to serve as an effective means of introducing venom into prey.  Fangs, like "normal" snake teeth, are replaced on a regular basis.  Fangs can be enlarged, grooved, and/or hollow, but are absent in nonvenomous snakes. Different types of fangs are utilized by rear-fang and front-fang snakes.

Front- versus Rear-fanged Snakes

What does it mean for a snake to be front-fanged or rear-fanged?  This not only refers to the placement of the fangs, themselves, but a number of other factors, including dentition.  Front-fanged snakes have less teeth in fewer places than rear-fanged snakes due to their lack of a need to hold on to prey in order to be able to efficiently envenomate them.  Front-fanged snakes belong to families Atractaspididae, Elapidae, and Viperidae, with rear-fanged snakes belonging to family Colubridae.

Front- and Rear-fanged Snake Envenomation Systems

Do front- and rear-fanged snakes simply differ based on the location of their fangs? No, there are a few other morphological differences related to their venom delivery systems as well (regarding musculature, venom gland morphology, fangs). Front-fanged snakes are capable of injecting venom ~100x quicker and more efficiently than rear-fanged snakes, resulting in a "bite-and-release" behavior being common in front-fanged snakes and a "bite-and-hold" behavior being common in rear-fanged snakes.

Snake Venom Composition and Variability

What’s in snake venom?  Snake venoms are primarily composed of proteins and peptides, which possess varying degrees of affinity for their substrates.  Does it depend on the type or size of the snake involved?  Yes, different families/genera/species/subspecies of snakes may contain different types of venom compounds, with relatively small-scale shifts in venom composition (presence/abundance) possible within an individual snake due to age, diet, environment/captivity, and season.

The Utility of Snake Venom Research

Why bother studying snake venom?  Why should I care unless I get bitten by a venomous snake?  Snake venom has been used for things other than just antivenom production (e.g. CroFab), such as scientific research and pharmaceutical applications.  When you consider all the possible individual venom components from species of venomous snakes alive today, you realize that there are roughly 60,000 compounds that can be used as drugs to aid human suffering and combat cancer.

The Expert's Guide to Snakebite

What should you do when you’re bitten a snake? Kill/capture the snake? Suck out the venom? Worry about infection? Go to the hospital? This article presents the best advice for dealing with snakebite.

Snakes in Indiana

What kinds of snakes can be found in Indiana?  What characteristics do they have and where can they be found?

How to Identify the Snakes of Indiana

How can you identify the 39 different taxa of snakes in Indiana?  How many of them are dangerous to humans?  Is it possible to ID a snake from a safe distance?

African Rock Python Kills Two Canadian Boys

How did a python kill 2 brothers in Canada? By strangling them? By trying to eat them?  Did the ceiling collapse on them? Join the investigation into what really happened and why a snake might do it.

Ten Points to Take Home from the Bill Nye and Ken Ham Debate

You’ve seen the debate, but are left feeling unsatisfied. Wouldn’t you like some semblance of closure? These are the top ten topics that are just begging to be addressed.

10 Shots to Rein in the Year of the Horse

If you enjoy getting drunk but don’t like the taste of alcohol, then it sounds like you could use 10 tasty shot/drink recipes to help you kick off the year of the horse.

Does Abiogenesis Require Magic?

Did we need a god or creator in order for life to originate on Earth or could life have spontaneously formed from a primordial soup billions of years ago?  Abiogenesis and Panspermia describe the two theories of how life began on Earth.  There are a handful of places in our solar system that possess the minimum requirements (carbon, liquid water, and energy) for creating the simplest kind of life from nonliving components.  Abiogenesis is simply about beating the odds, not magic.

Does The Big Bang Theory Require Magic?

How can the universe come from nothing?  What is in empty space?  At the subatomic level, quantum fluctuations occur everywhere, resulting in the spontaneous formation of a particle-antiparticle pair of energetic particles.  These particles can randomly undergo a process of inflation, which expands them, like a balloon, to form the known universe, which is still undergoing expansion.  Since time didn’t exist before this inflation, there was no time for a Creator to magically create the universe.