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The northern scarlet snake is a secretive, burrowing species, preferring habitats of soft soils, often in open forested areas or developed agricultural land. They spend most of their time hidden, emerging to feed on small rodents and lizards, but they have a particular taste for reptile eggs, swallowing them whole or puncturing them and consuming the contents.
The eggs are relatively large, weighing as much as 50 g (1.8 oz) each. Usually, only one or two eggs are laid, rarely three. Nevertheless, the eggs may represent up to half of the female's body weight. The young hatch after six weeks of incubation, and begin to feed two or three days after hatching, usually after they first shed their skin.
After they lay their eggs, females typically incubate them until they hatch. This is achieved by causing the muscles to "shiver", which raises the temperature of the body to a certain degree, and thus that of the eggs. Keeping the eggs at a constant temperature is essential for healthy embryo development.
The young are later released to survive on their own, with varying amounts of help from the parent(s) of the species. [20] Ovoviviparity, as in the garter snake, most vipers, and the Madagascar hissing cockroach, which have eggs (with shells) that hatch as they are laid, making it resemble live birth. [21]
A hemipenis (pl.: hemipenes) is one of a pair of intromittent organs of male squamates (snakes and lizards). [1] [2] [3] Hemipenes are usually held inverted within the body, and are everted for reproduction via erectile tissue, much like that in the human penis. They come in a variety of shapes, depending on species, with ornamentation such as ...
Rectilinear locomotion relies upon two opposing muscles, the costocutaneous inferior and superior, which are present on every rib and connect the ribs to the skin. [5] [6] Although it was originally believed that the ribs moved in a "walking" pattern during rectilinear movement, studies have shown that the ribs themselves do not move, only the muscles and the skin move to produce forward ...
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Parthenogenesis is a mode of asexual reproduction in which offspring are produced by females without the genetic contribution of a male. Among all the sexual vertebrates, the only examples of true parthenogenesis, in which all-female populations reproduce without the involvement of males, are found in squamate reptiles (snakes and lizards). [1]