SnakesSsSsSs.

Hi! This is Channel Sab bringing you the latest snippets of what Sab has watched on TV or otherwise. Today's episode is on snakessssssss.

Many people have a fear of snakes, what with their slimy, scaley bodies and slender, slithering waif. Their fears of course, are somewhat justified and logical, given that snakes rarely have a good reputation. And if I'm not wrong, the serpent is also used as a religious symbol of evil. No wonder people are afraid of snakes!

You know, I used to have nightmares of snakes myself. Once that there was a snake hiding in my toilet and that it would bite me if I sat on it (which led to me mastering the art of hover-pissing, but that's a story for another day), and another where snakes, all kinds of snakes, appeared in my grandma's house one day when we woke, and I had to hide on the bed and fling them off with the bolster. There were so many of them I could smell their acidic, saliva-like smell. Eew.

Anyway, today's insight into snakes is something that really surprised me, not in the sense that wow, hey, I actually like snakes, but more like, oh, they're really just another kind of human just looking for survival.

I shall commence to introduce to you different snakes and/or some interesting fact about a particular snake. In other words, snake-related tidbits. Yum.

1. The Non-venomous Poseur snake: the Scarlet King Snake
Coral Snakes are red-yellow-black horizontally-striped snakes that have fatal poison in their fangs. Their bright colourations are a warning of that threat, but for the Scarlet King Snake, the colours are a mere deterrance - they aren't actually venomous. As a general rule, the saying "red and yellow can kill a fellow, yellow and black's a friend of jack", helps, where in cases of a red touching yellow stripes, it is, in fact, the venomous Coral Snake, and in cases of red touching black strips, it is but its harmless doppelganger - the Scarlet King Snake.

2. The Egg-Eating Snake: I am unable to name it.
This snake does not rely on powerful venom in its fangs to get its kill. It eats eggs, and swallows them whole. Although, the interesting thing is, a part of their backbone is spiny, and when the egg travels to that area, they simply arch their backs and the egg is cracked. Its body then absorbs the yolk and protein, after which the unwanted eggshell is regugitated through its mouth. Yeah, yuck.

3. The Child-Bearing Snake: It Gives Birth! - the.. (gasp!) ANACONDA!
Anacondas have always been feared for their man-eating habits, and can yank a man into the jungle from the river with their sheer mass - the anaconda can grow up to 8 metres, holy shit! The one I did see (on the show of course) was about 3 metres, and its diameter thick as a leg of honey-baked ham! Crazy! And getting to the point: the much-feared Anaconda gives birth to its young, unlike its other cold-blooded, legless counterparts who lay eggs. They can give birth to a maximum of 40 baby Anacondas at each birth! However, the Anaconda is afterall, still "cold-blooded", as it leaves its young to fend for themselves as soon as they are born, like other snakes.

4. The Romantic: *Snakes have 2 Penises! (Penii?)
I'm not so sure if this is correct for all snakes, but if I remember correctly, the snake I saw was a black-and-white striped King snake. It found a mate, and they curled around each other. The commentator (David Attenborough if I'm not wrong), said that they had two, so that they could satisfy the female no matter which side she preferred. Ahhh, I see, so snakes are romantic, eh?

5. The Assassin: Mystery Snake whose Name I Forgot
This snake I discovered (in the sense of me being introduced to it, and not its existence being introduced to mankind) in a separate documentary about the Amazon. Its thin and sandy-brown in colour, resembling a rope. Its a water-snake and lives in the Amazon rivers, although I'm not sure if its geographically-exclusive. It is so elusive in the water against the sand! Its barely visible, and yet its bite contains poison strong enough to wipe out your lungs and kill you in 3 minutes. That is really freaky, especially of it takes you 3 min to swim back to shore, and another 3 days boat ride to the nearest hospital.

6. The Pugilistic Law-Abid-er: The King Cobra
The King Cobra (the Black one) has awesome venom that doesn't even have to be delivered with its fangs. Its venom can be squirted out with ducts in its mouth and sprayed in a haphazard manner to ensure maximum efficiency in blinding its attacker/prey. PS I read in a Duncan Watt novel that in this case, milk can be used to sooth the eyes, although I'm not quite sure how true it is. Its also the same snake that has a flap of skin that can pan open for it to up its intimidation quotient. Despite its awe-inspiring power, King Cobras observe a strict rule when facing off with its own kind: Two King Cobras will not resort to venom when fighting each other. Instead, they do some sort of slow, swaying dance-like movements to mirror each other, and try to slam their opponents down. The loser will leave the territory and no blood is shed (literally speaking).

7. The Gourmet: Another Mystery Snake
This snake is one fussy eater. Guess what its soulfood (sole food) is? CRAYFISH! Yeah, you heard me right. This reptilian connoiseur eats only freshly moulted crayfish, and finds these, not by sight, for snakes have reputedly bad eyesight, but by smell. They can smell the scent of freshly moulted crayfish even though they look just the same as the hard-shelled ones to the naked eye. Their sense of smell is so acute that they can smell them from nearly 30 feet away.

8. The Wastrel: One more Mystery Snake to add to the fun
This is like the Kiasu-Singaporean-at-a-Buffet Snake. This snake eats crabs - see where I'm getting at? They like the atas, expensive stuff. Crabs are usually not preyed upon because of their armour of hard shell, so basically its a buffet of crabs for these snakes. They rip the crab apart while it is alive, and eat just the legs. The body - too formidable a task to feed on, is simply discarded, the same way sharks are thrown back in the sea after their fins are cut off.

I have run out of reptilian juice for this night, and I shall retire soon, but I shall end of with some other random reptile tidbit that popped into my mind. Something I read when I was at the Singapore Zoological Gardens. Alligator saliva is full of bacteria. If I remember correctly, about 50,000 kinds of bacteria thrive in alligator saliva. Prey often die from their injuries eventually even after successfully escaping the alligator, from infections caused by the saliva on their wound. The only creature to be immune to this deluge of bacteria is the alligator, so alligator-on-alligator action will not end in saliva-infection-induced death.

And because of the insight I gained for this channel update, I am gonna revise on the previous post on The Meerkats. The snake did not pause at the 2 routes in the meerkat nest because it could not smell well, as I suggested. I have since learnt that snakes have a superb sense of smell. It was probably confused, since the meerkat scent (as I have mentioned, really quite strong) is all around the nest since its droppings and pee were surely all around, it was not able to make out the route which the little meerkats took. Its sight didn't help either - snakes have bad eyes. Maybe its one reason its eyes look so cold - it can't see much anyway.

Adios and good night to you, darling! Muacks. I hope you enjoy this post as well!
-Bananas in the Jungle of the Amazon