Venomous and nonvenomous snakes eat countless disease-carrying rodents each day, and those rodents are often covered in disease-carrying fleas and ticks that spread diseases to humans, pets, deer, squirrels, other wild game animals and even farm animals. Snakes are natural predators, so killing them will only increase an area’s pest population. A nerve connects the Jacobson’s organ to its brain, which tells it what it is smelling. As the snake flicks its moist tongue in and out, it collects odor particles and small organisms from whatever it touches and from the air around it, carries them back into the mouth, then presses the tongue against this organ in the roof of its mouth. It is a patch of sensory cells in the main nasal passage that detects heavy, moisture-borne odor particles. Snakes use a special organ called the Jacobson’s organ to sense chemicals in the environment. So how do they hunt? They actually smell with their tongue. Snakes have nostrils to breathe, but they aren’t used to smell prey as most people assume. Other snakes overpower their prey and quickly swallow them alive. Constrictors bite and wrap their prey with their bodies, squeezing tighter and tighter until blood flow is cut off to the brain and they can no longer feel a heartbeat. Let’s focus on some of the non-venomous species you may encounter.īecause they have no venom on which to rely, these species use different methods to subdue their prey.
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