Snake skin

“ The venom contains digestive enzymes that start digesting the prey from the inside.
Snakes grow rapidly till they mature and then continue to grow very slowly till their death. As they grow, they outgrow their skin so they moult the old one after a new skin has formed under it. The snake splits the old skin at the nose and literally crawls out of the old skin. During moulting, the snake stops eating but becomes aggressive.
A bite from a poisonous snake affects either the nervous system (neurotoxic) or the blood vessels (hemotoxic) of human beings. ”

“ If an incision be made through the skin and carried through the punctures made by the snake's fangs, very little difference will be found in the true skin. It may be a little more injected than normal, and the punctures will be found to be intensely so just at the edges, and a small quantity of blood may be effused there. But the areolar tissue lying beneath the true skin is the site of the chief change. It will generally be seen to be of a purple colour, and to be infiltrated with a large quantity of coagulable purple blood-like fluid. ”

“ What has become of the classical slime I cannot tell, but it is a fact that the skin of a modern snake is always delightfully dry and clean, and as smooth to the touch as velvet.
The next thing that attracts attention is their beauty, not so much the beauty of their colours as of their forms. With few exceptions, snakes are the most graceful of living things. Every position into which they put themselves, and every motion of their perfectly proportioned forms, is artistic. ”

“ Serpents, like the batrachians, cast off their skins and come out in gleaming new skins which have grown under the old ones. If the serpent for any reason cannot cast its skin at the proper time, it sickens and dies. The cast coat is perfect in form, but is generally turned inside out. Cast snake-skins are sometimes found in the woods by sharp-eyed boys. Sometimes the lucky boy finds a whole skin; at other times the cast skin has been partly destroyed by ants, beetles, or the effects of the weather. ”

“ That the solitary, unpopular bird takes a mischievous delight in scaring its enemies, you may know when I tell you that it likes better than any other lining for its nest, a cast snake skin. Is it any wonder that the baby flycatchers' hair stands on end? If the great-crest cannot find the skin of a snake to coil {166} around her eggs, or to hang out of the nest, she may use onion skins, or oiled paper, or even fish scales ”

“ In a moment the unfortunate victim of its wrath feels a chilly tremor run through all his frame; a swelling immediately begins on the spot where the teeth had entered, which spreads by degrees over the whole body, and produces on every part of the skin the variegated hue of the snake. The bite of this reptile is more or less venomous according to the season of the year in which it is given. ”

“ Once the old skin has passed over the thick mid-body, the snake often crawls forward using rectilinear locomotion until the skin is completely shed. It normally comes off in one piece; but, if the snake is unhealthy or has not had sufficient food or water, the skin may come off in patches. ”

“ Factors determining the outcome of snakebite are: size, health, and species of snake; individual variation of venom toxicity of the species; age and size of the victim; allergic or immune responses; location of the bite; and the amount of venom injected and the depth to which it is injected. The last factor is one of the most variable, owing to (1) character and thickness of clothing between the snake and the victim's skin, (2) accuracy of the snake's strike, and (3) size of the snake, since a large snake can deliver more venom and at a greater depth than can a small snake. ”

“ The skin ready to be cast yields round the snake's mouth only, and remains adherent to the extremity of the tail. As the animal advances, the caudal extremity of the skin is inverted—that is, pulled inward—and so the process goes on, and is completed by the tail passing through the mouth of the skin; and thus the direction of the abandoned skin is directly opposite to the direction taken by the skin-casting snake—that is, if the mouth of the skin lies east, the snake went out to the west. ”

“ The most common with us were the brown, black, and whip snakes, and the death-adder, all poisonous; and the carpet-snake, harmless. The brown and black snakes run from two to eight feet in length, frequent the long grass, chiefly in the neighbourhood of swamps, and from the snug way in which they coil up, and their disinclination to move, are highly dangerous. The latter is very handsome, the back of a brilliant black, and the under portion of a sea-shell pink. Their skin is sometimes used by bushmen as a cover to their waistbelts, which are much beautified thereby. ”

“ He thinks snakes shed the skin ‘as if you turned a narrow hem, or a glove-finger by a knotted thread fastened at the tip,’ and which of course would draw the tip inside the finger. The glove tip is to represent the tail of the snake, which, as he supposes, adhering at the tip, is drawn along inwards as the snake proceeds to crawl out of its own mouth, or its cuticle’s mouth—which has already become loosened round the lips. This, in the mind of that writer, satisfactorily accounts for the skin being usually found reversed! Can he have never seen a silkworm change its skin ”

“ The naked space of thinner skin between these scales being very considerable, one can therefore easily understand how, when a snake would attempt to pass over a horse-hair rope, the sharp, prickly hairs, standing out chevaux-de-frise fashion, would insinuate themselves unpleasantly in those softer and more vulnerable interstices which become exposed by the sinuations of the body. ”

“ When a snake throws off its skin, which it always does once in a year, and sometimes oftener, the eyelids are thrown off with it, and a pair of new ones are found lying below all ready to take their place. ”

“ In the moulting of the snake, which occurs yearly, and sometimes oftener, the outer covering of these creeping scales is shed; this is true also of the covering of the eyes, so that the cast epidermis represents, with great distinctness, the external features of the animal. In moulting, the outer skin is broken along the back, near the head, and the animal emerges, frequently drawing with him the skin, turning it inside out. ”

“ A serpent can creep, spring, climb, swim, expand, constrict, suspend itself by the tail, burrow in the ground, and even raise its body almost erect. Its muscular irritability is remarkably great and persistent, depending on its nervous energy. The heart palpitates long after death; the jaws open and shut even when the head is severed from the body; the outer skin is shed more than once, and the ancients believed that by this means the snake renewed its youth. It does not need food for long periods when casting its skin. ”

“ A few days previous to this operation the snake is languid and abstains from feeding; its skin is dull and the sight impaired by the opaque condition of the lid; a day or two before moulting, the outer stratum of the epidermis becomes again transparent and the eye clear, through this stratum becoming detached from the subjacent tissue, until it is pulled off in one piece, by the snake rubbing itself against stones or bushes. The first exuviation takes place very shortly after birth.
Snakes are long-lived, although the limit of duration of life is not known in any of them. ”

“ Sometimes with a large victim this process may last for hours; the whole mouth and head become painfully distended and the veins swollen almost to bursting. The snake pushes the prey against a stone or other obstacle, rests awhile quite exhausted, and begins afresh. At last the bulk of the prey has passed the mouth, the skin of the neck is stretched to the utmost, the scales being separated by wide interstices, the ribs work spasmodically, the victim is pressed into the shape of a sausage, and the deed is done. ”

“ The eyes, which may be rudimentary in the burrowing species, or large in those of nocturnal habits, have no eyelids, and are covered with a transparent film of skin that is sloughed off whenever the skin is shed, which happens frequently in young, growing individuals, but only annually in adults, as a rule; and for a day or two snakes are blinded by the loosening of this covering. No snake has ear openings, and their hearing is dull. ”

“ For Snakes have no breastbone and have lost all vestiges of front legs and shoulder bones, nor have they any hips or hind legs except among the boas and rock-snakes; and even these have only small traces of hips, which carry some crooked bones, ending in horny or fleshy claws, in the place where hind legs ought to be. They have no eyelids (and by this we may know them from the legless lizards) , but their skin grows right over the eyes, so that when a snake casts its skin there are111 no holes where the eyes have been, but only clear round spaces like watch-glasses, in the scaly skin. ”

“ Owen states, however, that in one instance exuviation commenced by the snake rubbing the skin loose around its jaws, working it back against the sides of its cage, when, putting its head through coils made by its own body, it pressed back the skin, turning it outward. We have observed that the black snake, on moulting, becomes more sensitive and irritable, but shy, and inclined, for a day or so, to keep close in a corner of his cage. The scaly covering of serpents must diminish their acuteness of touch ”

“ Sometimes snake charmers will allow their pets to bite them, and, when the blood appears upon the surface of the skin, they place lozenges of some black absorbent upon the wounds to suck up the blood and afterward sell them at high prices for charms and amulets. ”

“ Close the mouth, and wet the whole body with the solution of corrosive sublimate. This should be done once a day for several days. Place the specimen on a board to dry. For position, copy after nature as near as possible. After the skin is dry a coat of varnish adds much to its appearance.
ARTICLE IX.
KILLING AND DRESSING SNAKES. To kill a snake without bruising or breaking the skin is a difficult undertaking, for, as a general thing, we are not looking for snakes, therefore we are not prepared to capture one. ”

“ The abject terror inspired by the presence of a snake is such that an innocent rat will set to gnawing the snake's tail in default of more [Pg 410] usual provender; while a rabbit placed with a snake near skin-shedding time will placidly nibble the loose rags of epidermis about the snake's sides.
THE FASCINATED RAT.
The pig treats the snake with disrespect, not to say insolence ”

“ But a new thing, a great hitch, had happened yesterday in the gliding and noiseless current of his life, and he felt as a snake must feel who has sloughed off its winter skin, and cannot understand the brightness and sensitiveness of its new one. ”

“ The fascinating power ascribed to the black snake is an error. When a snake is discovered in the vicinity of a nest, the male bird mounts a spray, and in great agitation flutters his wings in a threatening manner, till an opportunity offers of flying down to the attack. In these encounters the snake sometimes succeeds in biting the bird, and in injecting its venom, when the effect of the poison is so sudden, as to paralyse the further efforts of the latter; hence has arisen the supposed power of fascination, and the story of birds flying into the snake's jaws. ”

“ Of our two hundred and thirty-seven kinds of snakes only forty-four are ranked by naturalists as venomous, and many of these are quite incapable of killing any animal as large as a man. Others are very rare or local. In short, we may reckon the poisonous snakes with which we have any practical concern at four kinds, and the chance of a snake found in the house belonging to one of these kinds stands at less than one in ten.
It is a sufficiently terrible thought, however, that there are even four kinds of reptiles going silently about the land whose bite is certain death. ”

“ And assuredly the remedies are generally so severe as to be in themselves sufficiently terrifying. ‘No time for reflection;’ ‘no mercy must be shown,’ declares Sir Joseph Fayrer, in describing the incredible rapidity with which the venom inoculates the blood ‘in a moment of time.’ Where a deep wound has been inflicted by a highly venomous snake on a small animal, death has been known to occur in a few seconds, especially if the bite were on a large vein or an artery. Therefore if the bite be on a limb, to tie a ligature is the first thing to be done. ”

“ Thatched roofs, and mud and straw walls are favoured hiding places for snakes and should be checked frequently. Many bites occur when people walking barefoot or wearing only sandals accidentally step on a snake. ”

“ The poison gland is after all only a modified salivary gland. It lies behind the eye, whence the venom is conveyed by a duct to the base of the fang, down along it, and sometimes through it, and is emitted at what we may for the present call the point, into the wound made by it, something on the principle of an insect’s sting. As when inserting the sting the pressure forces the poison out of a gland at its base, so does the pressure of certain muscles act upon the poison gland when a snake opens its mouth to strike. ”