Evolutionary Adaptations in Snakes One Term Paper

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This allows the lower jaw to stretch laterally extending the snake's ability to accommodate large prey even more than the double-hinged connection between its upper and lower jaw. This particular adaptation has a dual function in that also allows the snake to "jaw walk" over its prey by repeatedly advancing one side of its jaw at a time over the prey in the swallowing process. Finally, the snake also possesses many recurved teeth (Carr, 1993; Gould, 1991). In addition to facilitating the initial kill, these adaptations also provide a very secure purchase on prey and make jaw-walking physically possible.

Explaining the Differences between Snakes and other Similar Species

It would appear that the unique hunting and killing strategy of the snake is responsible for the evolution of the ability to swallow atypically large prey in comparison to most predators (Carr, 1993).

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Like other prey species that are solitary hunters, caecilians, glass lizards, and sirens are limited to killing prey species that are substantially smaller than themselves. Because the snake's unique constriction methods allow it to kill much larger prey, this would naturally have driven the adaptations necessary to allow it to swallow whatever it could kill. Since venomous snakes evolved their additional adaptations of specialized saliva much later (Gould, 1996), they would also have benefited from the same factors. They would likely have evolved similarly either way by virtue of the same ability to kill large prey with a venomous bite......

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