Snakes (Serpentes)

This group gathers Reptiles subcategory members belonging to the suborder Serpentes, the limbless, carnivorous squamates found on every continent except Antarctica and in every ocean but the coldest polar waters. It spans venomous elapids such as the king cobra, black mamba and coral snake, venomous vipers and pit vipers such as the rattlesnakes, the copperhead, the cottonmouth and the gaboon viper, and largely constricting or mildly venomous species such as the ball python, Burmese python, boa constrictor, green anaconda and the many ratsnakes, kingsnakes and colubrids that make up most of the group's diversity. A snake detects prey through a combination of vision, in some families heat-sensing pits capable of imaging infrared warmth, and a forked tongue that samples airborne chemical cues and delivers them to a specialized organ on the roof of the mouth. Every species gathered here swallows prey whole rather than chewing it, a highly mobile jaw and skull structure unique among reptiles that lets some species take prey considerably wider than their own head.