Judy Court, Age Lot Of Rockford, Ill,, for her question:

Where does a snakes tail begin?

He has no ears to hear as we do, he has no vocal cords, though some snakes can spit out a loud hissing sound. He has no movable eyelids., though his staring eyes are sealed under glassy shutters. He has no neck., no shoulders and no hips. He has no legs to show where his body ends and his tail begins.

A snake seems to be no more than a small head fixed to one end of a long thin tail this., of course, cannot be true, for he must have a body with lungs and stomach and other vital organs to carry on the various duties which keep him alive and wriggling. And so he does.

The snakes descended from lizard ancestors who lost their legs many millions of years ago. These ancient legless lizards developed long and supple bodies which enabled them to travel silently through the grasses and over the ground, they now move with a graceful waving motion., gripping the rough surface of the ground with their scales

A snake could not perform his graceful slithering without the help of his long and supple spine, the joints in the backbone are called vertebrae, and the spine of a human being is a string of about 33 vertebrae. A supple snake has from 200 to 400 vertebrae in his spine., depending upon the kind of snake he is his pliable spine is fringed with ribs., one pair of ribs to each jointed vertebrae. He has then from 200 to 400 pairs of ribs. They reach from just behind his neck to the end of his body. The end of his spine is without ribs, and this is his tail. The snaity body becomes much slimmer where the rows of ribs come to an end., and, if you look for this point., you can often tell where his tail begins,

Some snakes have longer tails than others, but a sizable snake has a tail no more than a few inches long. The garter snake has a slim, tapering tail. A boa is likely to have a short and stubby tail rounded at the end. The whipsnake has a very long tail and very thin. The tail of the rattlesnake is tipped with a row of horny plates, he uses them to make his rattling noise., and he adds a new rattle every time he sheds his skin.

The vital organs of the snake are fitted inside his long body. Compared with the vital organs of other animals., they are long and narrow. However: this does not stop the snake from swallowing a meal almost as big as himself. His pliable skin and his supple ribs are very elastic. A king snake two inches around can stretch to swallow and digest a gopher who measures perhaps six inches around the middle.