Discover Why Snakes Have Forked Tongues + 5 More Amazing Snake Facts

Often associated with dark magic and used as a metaphor for evil or trickery in mythology, snakes have been vastly misunderstood for millennia. Depictions of snakes’ forked tongues and vertical pupils arouse fear as much as curiosity: Why DO snakes have forked tongues? How do they get around with no legs? Despite this sinister reputation, snakes are fascinating creatures. 

Snake biology, behaviors in the wild and captivity, and the evolution of snakes are studied by zoologists. Their findings give us context for how reptiles evolved and new snake species we can expect to see in the future. These long and slithery reptiles are someone’s beloved pets but other people’s worst nightmares. 

Whether you dream of having a Burmese python for a pet or flinch if you see a plastic snake, here are five amazing snake facts.

Why Snakes Have Forked Tongues

Snakes and monitor lizards are closely related. Both groups of animals constantly flick their tongues, which are forked. They have long forked tongues because the dual ends give them an edge to follow prey.

Think of how mammals have noses with two nostrils. If we had just one nostril, it would be harder to breathe and smell things. While snakes and other reptiles also have two nostrils, their tongues are utilized for olfactory purposes rather than taste. A forked tongue with two ends functions more like a retractable set of nostrils rather than for tasting.

Scientists theorize that forked tongues in snakes and monitor lizards evolved at least twice to assist with foraging. With two tongue tips that can sniff out pheromones and other chemicals prey animals leave behind, it makes foraging more efficient than reliance on sight alone. The bidirectional sensors help snakes detect where the smell is coming from.

Snakes also use their forked tongues to follow other scents, such as the trails left by other snakes when seeking a warm and safe place to hide from larger animals.

Snakes Flick Their Tongues to Navigate Their Environment

If you’ve ever watched snakes in a nature documentary or observed them at zoos and in the wild, you’ll notice that they flick their tongues when they move. This is a snake taking note of its environment and anything new and interesting that arrives. It’s also used to assess safety. If you have a pet snake or pet lizard, they use those tongue flicks to assess you as well: “Is this warm and smooth thing another snake, a predator, or a giant plant? Will it eat me? Am I safe with it?”

Other types of tongue flicks are feeding responses or used in socialization with other snakes.

Snakes Hiss When Threatened or Annoyed

Snakes hiss to let humans and other animals know it’s time to back off. If the snake is annoyed, feels threatened, or doesn’t want to be handled, hissing is a clear sign of displeasure. Hissing is rarely done out of aggression. It’s a defensive response from a snake that wants to appear threatening to what may be a predator.

Wild snakes are not aggressors like the media and folklore often portray them. They just want to be left alone and will hiss if another animal gets too close. They will only go further and bite if they genuinely feel threatened.

Snake Bodies Are 50% Throat

Thanks to unhinged jaws and stretchy stomachs, snakes use their jaw and neck muscles to push prey back without needing to chew it. Snakes have long esophagi that comprise about half of their bodies. In comparison, a human esophagus is about the same length as a burrito.

Snake esophagi also have several internal folds that push the prey into their J-shaped stomachs before reaching the intestines. These folds, combined with sheer force, are how snakes can swallow their food whole.

Wild Snakes Don’t Solely Eat Live Prey

Snakes eat rodents and other small animals in the wild. In captivity, tame snakes usually eat pre-killed rodents and chicks. The reason for this is that live feeding can erase all the work done taming and socializing these reptiles. Subsequently, zoologists and reptile keepers thought for the longest time that snakes didn’t eat carrion (dead animals) in the wild at all and that eating a dead mouse was only done in captivity.

Herpetologists found that in a majority of field observations of wild snakes, most of them will eat carrion. Certain species of monitor lizard, like the Asian water monitor, have a strong scavenger sense, and it appears snakes are using this sense more today. It’s unclear whether snakes are evolving to use latent scavenger instincts or are turning to scavenging because their usual prey is now scarcer.

Snakes Can Go Months Without Food

Unlike humans, adult snakes can go for several months without eating. Talk about extreme intermittent fasting! 

It takes up to two weeks for most snake species to digest their food. However, larger meals and snakes take longer than that. Because snakes are cold-blooded and don’t burn off energy as quickly as mammals do, they don’t need to eat as often. In captivity, large snakes feed even less often for this reason.

Small and young snakes might eat just once a week, while large snakes eat once a month. Very large snakes, like reticulated pythons and anacondas, can go for months without a meal. Their slow digestion of equally large wild prey like wild boar and monkeys enables them to go for extremely long timeframes without eating.