Skeleton of a Snake
Love them or hate them, snakes are biologically fascinating. This image shows the skeleton of a corn snake. Its flexible spine and jaws allow it to eat animals like mice and rats that you would never think could fit in its mouth.
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DownloadSkeleton of a Snake
Love them or hate them, snakes are biologically fascinating. This image shows the skeleton of a corn snake. Its flexible spine and jaws allow it to eat animals like mice and rats that you would never think could fit in its mouth.
What am I looking at?
This is a fluorescently dyed image of a corn snake skeleton. The spine is coiled around itself in the center of the main image (1), and the ribs can be seen as lines coming off the spine (2); the skull is at the bottom right of this image (3).
Click on the right arrow to see additional images that show increasing magnifications of the skull.
Biology in the background
Corn snakes live in North America and are not venomous. They are constrictors that wrap their muscular bodies tightly around their prey to kill them. When a corn snake is ready to eat, it swallows its prey whole. A corn snake can eat a meal that looks as if it would never fit in its mouth by unhinging its jaws and using its backward-facing teeth to force the prey’s body down its throat.
A corn snake can grow up to 1.8 meters long, or roughly 6 feet.
Technique
This image was created using fluorescence microscopy.
Jake Hines, University of Colorado, Denver