A Field Guide to Snakes

Not for the faint of heart!

Field Guide Vol. 261

Happy Lunar New Year! Today marks the first day of the lunar calendar and the beginning of festivities for millions of people across Asia and around the world. We are now in the Year of the Snake, so in honor of our slithering friends, this week’s Field Guide explores these fascinating reptiles—their physical traits, their symbolism and the explorers searching for rare sightings in the Amazon.

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Did you know?

Mohler Addison, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Aside from not having legs and slithering around on their stomachs, snakes have a multitude of unique physiological features. They don’t have eyelids so they cannot blink or close their eyes meaning they actually sleep with their eyes open. Instead, they have transparent discs that go over their eyes called brilles that protect their eyes from damage. Despite having nostrils, snakes use their tongues for most of their smelling. When they flick out their tongue, they collect chemical particles from the air and transfer them to the roof of their mouth where they have a special organ called a Jacobson’s organ which interprets these particles.

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Trail near a tributary of the Amazon. 2013. Photograph by Steven Prorak/Alamy.

Birding Hurts Your Neck

By Karim Ganem Maloof

On my most recent excursion, I traveled to the Amazon with Oto, a local bird-watcher. My goal was to add to my list of observed birds, or lifers. But this long trek, it turns out, took me on a detour. I not only came across birds but also heard stories of Austrian documentarians, coca fields, a missing drone and an anaconda—a snake that sank its teeth into one of the filmmakers.

A few years ago, a group of Austrian filmmakers hired an Indigenous man—a Ticuna—to be their fixer in the Amazon. Their intention was to film the anaconda in its jungle environment and, while they were there, get some supporting shots of the river and the jungle, those essential voice-over aerial views that abound in documentaries. And for that they brought a drone.