Category Plants & Animals

The milk snake lives in the rainforests of Central America. It’s shy, secretive and harmless, but its bright bands of red, yellow and black make it look like the deadly coral snake. Its enemies think the milk snake is equally poisonous, and so leave it well alone.

Is it true? Some snakes mimic vines.

Yes. The African vine snake hangs down from tree branches, looking just like a harmless vine. There’s a nasty suprise for any bird that perches on it. It suddenly snatches the bird and swallows it down.

Which snake looks like sand?

Many desert snakes are perfectly camouflaged to look like sand. The horned viper lies in the sand with just its ‘horns’ showing.  When a tasty-desert rat passes by, the snake pounces.

Amazing! Chameleons are brilliant at changing colour. They can go from almost white to black in minutes. They change colour to blend in with their surroundings and to show they are feeling angry or frightened.

Where do leaf-tailed geckos hide?

Pressed upside down against a tree trunk, the leaf-tailed gecko is almost impossible to see. Its body and tail are dappled brown and green to look exactly like the bark of the tree. The ragged fringe of scales around its body and legs hides its outline. It lives on the island of Madagascar.

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The basilisk lizard escapes from enemies by running across the water. It runs so fast on its long, fringed back toes that it doesn’t have time to sink. The lizard lives by rivers in South American forests.

Who walks upside down?

Geckos can run up smooth walls and walk upside down across ceilings. They have special suction pads on their feet which allow them to cling on. The pads are covered in thousands of tiny hairs which help the geckos to grip the tiniest bumps and dips.

Is it true? Dragons can fly.

Yes. Flying dragons are small lizards. To travel through the trees, they take to the air. They glide from branch to branch on special ‘wings’. These are flaps of skin stretched over very long ribs which stick out from the sides of their body.

Amazing! Tortoises are real slow-coaches. Their heavy shells weigh them down so much that they move about very slowly, or not at all. Most tortoises lumber along at speeds of less than 0.5 kph, even when they’re hungry.

Which lizard runs the fastest?

The speediest lizard is the spiny-tailed iguana. It can speed along at almost 35 kph, about the same speed as a champion sprinter. In an experiment, a racetrack was set up and the lizards were timed with the same devices used at the Olympic Games.

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The largest snack ever eaten by a snake was an impala antelope. It was devoured by an African rock python. The snake didn’t chew its enormous meal into pieces. It swallowed the impala whole!

Which snake squeezes its prey to death?

A boa constrictor holds its prey in its teeth, and then wraps its coils tightly around it. The snake does not crush its victim to death but squeezes it until it suffocates.

Is it true? A snake can go for more than three years without food.

Yes. It can take snake weeks to digest a large meal. So they don’t need to eat very often. A pit viper once survived without food for three years, three months a world record.

Amazing! There are many scary stories of snakes swallowing people. But only a few of them are true. In 1979, a young boy in South Africa was seized by a 4.5 metre-long African rock python. His friends ran off to get help. When they came back about 20 minutes later, the snake had swallowed the boy whole.

Why do snakes have elastic jaws?

A snake has sharp, backward-pointing teeth. Its teeth are good at holding food but can’t bite it into chunks. Instead, snakes swallow their prey whole. Snakes have amazingly stretchy jaws, with elastic-like hinges between their jawbones. This means they can open their mouths very wide, to swallow food larger than the size of their heads, such as eggs.

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Some of the deadliest land snakes live in Australia. A drop of their poison could kill 250,000, mice. Other highly dangerous snakes include cobras, rattlesnakes, and taipans, which can grow to 3.5 metres long.

Which snake spits poison?

One type of cobra spits poison in its enemies’ faces, blinding the victim! Spitting cobras have verb good aims. They can hit a target more than two metres away.

Amazing! Fer-de-lance snakes have massive fangs and are deadly poisonous. They prey on rats and mice. Explorers claimed that local hunters in South America put these lethal snakes in tubes and fired them at their enemies.

Is it true? All lizards are poisonous.

No. Of the 3,800 different kinds of lizards, only two are poisonous. They are the gila monster and the Mexican beaded lizard. These lizards do not have fangs but bite their victims and chew poison into the wound instead.

Which snake has the longest fangs?

The deadly gaboon viper from Africa has fangs which grow up to five centimetres, as long as your little fingers! When they’re not in use, they’re folded back against the roof of the viper’s mouth.

As a snake grows, its scaly skin gets too small. So the snake grows a new skin underneath, then slithers out of the old one, starting from the head and working down to the tail. A snake sheds its skin in one piece, several times a year.

Is it true? You can tell a tortoise’s age from its shell.

Yes. A tortoise’s shell is made of bone, covered in tough, horny plates. The shell protects the tortoise’s body. But that’s not all it’s good for. Each year, the plates grow a new ring. Count these up, and you can use them to estimate the tortoise’s age.

Which reptile has armour plating?

Alligators and crocodiles are covered in tough, horny scales, strengthened with bone. This waterproof armour stops their bodies drying out in the sun, and protects them from enemies.

Amazing! Geckos have see-through eyelids. These are clear flaps of skin which protect their eyes from dust and dirt. A gecko can’t blink to clean its eyelids. So it sticks out its tongue and licks them clean.

Which snake uses a rattle?

The rattle at the tip of a rattlesnake’s tail is made of hollow scales, loosely linked together. If an enemy gets too close, the rattlesnake shakes its rattle, which makes a loud, angry buzzing sound to scare the attacker away. If this doesn’t work, the rattlesnake coils itself up, then strikes with its poisonous fangs.

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Reptiles are a group of animals which includes snakes, lizards, turtles, tortoises, alligators and crocodiles. They are all vertebrates (they have bones and skeletons inside their bodies), they breathe air and most of them live on land. Their skins are scaly to stop their bodies drying out.

Amazing! Lizards love sunbathing. All reptiles are cold-blooded. They can’t control their own body temperature but rely on the weather instead. Cold lizards are sluggish and slow. So they warm up in the sun, and then scurry off hunting.

Is it true? Today’s reptiles have famous relatives.

Yes. The relatives of today’s reptiles were the dinosaurs, which ruled the Earth for more than 200 million years. They suddenly died out about 65 million years ago.

Which is the shortest snake?

At only about ten centimetres long, thread snakes are the shortest, thinnest snakes in the world. If you took the lead out of a pencil, they could slither through the hole. These rare snakes live in the West Indies, and eat tiny ants and termites.

Which is the biggest reptile?

The biggest reptiles alive today are saltwater crocodiles. They’re usually about four metres long, but a gigantic crocodile killed in 1957 measured no less than 8.64 metres, and weighed more than two tonnes.

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