For many people, the word ‘snake’ invokes an extreme response. Understanding how they can cope without limbs to catch and manipulate food, or to chase prey and escape from predators, or why some species give birth to live young while others lay eggs, are just some of the many fascinating aspects of snakes.
Regardless of how you feel about snakes, hopefully this book will help you to appreciate them. Their physical appearance and biology are the remarkable result of millions of years of evolution, as their ancestors abandoned the use of limbs for a life of sliding on their bellies. Along the way, their elongated shape has required all sorts of compromises and solutions to a range of problems. They even had the audacity to invade aquatic environments and speciate rapidly to create the diverse assemblage of sea snakes we have today.
Book preview
Format: Softcover, pocket sized publication.
Size: 115mm x 100mm
Pages: 72
Snakes covered in this book: Australian bockadam, Butler’s mulga snake, bandy bandys, bardick, black-backed snake, black-headed python, black-naped snake, black-necked whipsnake, black whipsnake, black-ringed mud snake, black-striped snake, blind snakes, brown tree snake, burrowing snakes, carpet python, Children’s python, crowned snake, curl snake, Dampierland burrowing snake, death adders, desert banded snake, desert death adder, desert hooded snake, dugite, Gould’s hooded snake, greater black whipsnake, green tree snake, Grey's mud snake, grey whipsnake, gwardar, Jan’s banded snake, keelback, Kimberley death adder, Lake Cronin snake, lesser black whipsnake, little spotted snake, mangrove snakes, mud snakes, mulga snake, narrow-banded bandy bandy, narrow-banded shovel-nosed snake, northern bandy bandy, northern shovel-nosed snake, north-western shovel-nosed snake, olive python, olive whipsnake, Ord curl snake, Pilbara bandy bandy, Pilbara death adder, Pilbara hooded snake, Pilbara olive python, pygmy python, reptile removal, Richardson’s mangrove snake, ringed brown snake, Rosen’s snake, rough-scaled python, rufous whipsnake, sea snakes, Shark Bay sea snake, short-nosed snake, shovel-nosed snakes, snakebite, snake catchers, southern death adder, southern shovel-nosed snake, south-west carpet python, Stimson’s python, Stoke’s sea snake, taipan, tiger snake, water python, Weigel’s snake, west coast banded snake, western desert taipan, whipsnakes, white-bellied mangrove snake, wide-banded northern bandy bandy, woma python, yellow-bellied sea snake, yellow-faced whipsnake