Snakes: Senses and Strategies

A snake has no legs, no eyelids that blink and no outer ears, yet it hunts, climbs, swims and burrows. It manages with a toolkit of senses and strategies that is easy to misunderstand. Snakes pick up scents with their tongues, some can sense body heat, and many feel vibrations coming through the ground.

This category follows nine species through nine questions: how a pit viper detects heat, why shedding skin matters, how constriction actually works, how venom evolved, why some snakes move sideways across sand, and which ones lay eggs and which give birth. We also visit islands and the open sea, and we take a few myths on directly.

Snake conservation status is reviewed regularly, so each article shows its category with the date we checked it. Nothing here is advice for handling or keeping wild snakes: the goal is to understand them from a safe distance.