Green Vine Snake

We just learned about the striped house snake.

Another type of snake is called the green vine snake, or the Ahaetulla nasuta.

It is a skinny green tree snake that lives in Asia.

This snake has venom but it's bite will only make your skin swell up for a few days, like a bee sting.
It mostly just eats frogs and lizards.


(from: wikipedia - ahaetulla nasuta)

When it gets scared it puffs up it's body and you can see a black and white skin underneath it's scales.

(from: wikipedia - ahaetulla nasuta)

There was a legend long ago that if one of these snakes looked at you, it's eyes would make you blind.


(from: wikipedia - ahaetulla nasuta)

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Striped House Snake

We just learned about the type of snake the Massasauga.

Another type of snake is the striped house snake, also known as boaedon lineatus.

This snake is found in Africa, and is found inside or near houses a lot where it eats up mice and rats that carry diseases and destroy food.
These snakes are not poisonous, so they are not harmful to humans and can be very helpful.
Lots of people keep these snakes as pets.

The word lineatus in the snakes name comes from the white line that goes down the snakes body.
They come in different colors too, black, red-brown or green.


(from: wikipedia - boaedon lineatus)


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Massasauga

We just learned about the Schnauzer and a whole lot of other types of dogs!

Now let's learn about snakes!
They can be scary and look slimy, but snakes are very important in nature, just like spiders, sharks, alligators and other scary animals.
Snakes help by eating things like mice and rats that carry diseases and eat crops.
They are also food for other larger animals like hawks and eagles!

One type of snake is the Massasauga, which is a venomous rattle snake.

These snakes can grow to be about 2 feet long, and they are grey with dark brown or black spots on their body.

They are venomous, which means their teeth let out venom to kill their prey when they bite.
Even though the venom can hurt humans, it won't kill them as long as they go to the doctor after getting bitten.

These snakes are shy and try to stay away from humans.
They would only bite a human if they were stepped on or if someone tried to pick them up.

Mostly these snakes eat mice, rats, lizards, frogs, centipedes and even smaller snakes.
Since they do not have arms to hold their prey or big teeth to chew it up, they have to bite something like a lizard, wait for it to stop moving, and then swallow it whole!


(from: wikipedia - massasauga)

The rattle on the snake's tail is made up of a bunch of little hollow hard pieces of keratin that are hooked together. When the rattle snake is feeling threatened it will shake it's tail to make a rattling sound to warn people to stay away.
Every time that the rattle snake sheds it's skin, it grows another piece for it's rattle.


(from: wikipedia - rattlesnake)


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