Is it true that snakes drink human milk? The kindest snake

Snakes (Serpentes, or Ophclassia), order of reptiles. The body is elongated, limbs are absent. The eyes of snakes are devoid of eyelids and have a solid transparent shell on the outside, which separates during molting along with the entire old layer of skin covering the head. The eardrum and middle ear are absent.

The right and left branches of the mandible are connected by a tensile ligament. The entire body of the snake is covered with scales, the color of which often harmonizes with environment; Thus, snakes living among sand are usually sand-colored, while arboreal snakes are green.

People have always been biased towards snakes: they deified them and at the same time were afraid of them, either avoided meeting them, or deliberately killed them. This unconscious fear has survived to this day, but it arises from misunderstanding, ignorance of the habits and character of the animal, and basic illiteracy. We make up our own stories and believe in them!

All snakes are dangerous!

This is the first misconception about snakes. If we are not talking about a ten-meter python that has chosen a random traveler as its victim, the snake is much smaller in size than a person, and, as a result, will not hunt him and bite him unnecessarily. A snake's bite is its only possible self-defense, and killing an animal just because it crossed your path is not humane. All snakes are poisonous. In fact, of the more than 2,500 species living on earth, only 500 are poisonous, 50 of which live in tropical seas. In addition, the bite is more than half poisonous snakes does not pose a serious danger to humans, causing only weak signs

poisoning Snakes sting prey with their forked tongue.

This ancient belief has nothing to do with reality. All snakes bite! To do this, they have teeth, and the tongue is an organ of smell, touch and taste. Snakes are completely deaf.

This statement is not entirely true. Without external ears and eardrums, snakes hear with a special, inner ear, picking up vibrations spreading through the ground or water. In addition, they have a highly developed sense of smell and are sensitive to heat. So the replacement of ordinary ears in snakes is impressive, and snakes hear, but not as much as we do. Snakes hypnotize their victims. Obviously, this prejudice arose because their eyes are always open - snakes do not have closing eyelids and never blink. But everything attributed to them magical properties

- deception. The myth that snakes try in every possible way to find and get to milk: they climb into cow sheds at night and drink it straight from the cow’s udder has no basis. In the barn, snakes look for rodents that are hiding in the hay, and they cannot suck milk from the udder on their own, because the tongue and the shape of the jaws are not adapted for this.

Snakes cannot tolerate milk and will never drink it. This is another interpretation of the relationship between snakes and milk. But the truth is actually somewhere in the middle: in nature, snakes never drink milk - they simply do not digest it, causing allergic and stomach diseases - but in extremely rare cases, when there is no water nearby, they may agree to milk.

If you scare a snake, it will crawl away on its own. A trapped snake, frightened by inappropriate actions on your part, can be very dangerous! Provoked by aggressive attacks in its direction, it most often rushes to attack, so when meeting a snake you need to remain calm and slowly walk away.

An incision should be made on the wound so that the poison flows out faster. If you do not have time to cut the wound immediately after the bite, such an action will become useless. Moreover, the resulting cuts will take a long time to heal and can cause infection in the wound.

A tourniquet should be applied to the wound, which will stop the spread of poison throughout the body. Since snake venom spreads through the lymphatic vessels, a tourniquet will do nothing to stop it from entering the bloodstream. To slow down the resorption of the poison, you need to fix the bitten limb in a stationary position and provide the victim with complete rest.

Alcohol or cauterization will help disinfect the wound. It is better to use a solution of hydrogen peroxide or potassium permanganate. Alcohol only stimulates blood flow, which in this case is not desirable. And burns do more harm than good.

Dead snakes are not dangerous. Be careful when handling a dead snake! Its severed head can bite for some time, maintaining the toxicity of the poison and muscle mobility.

In general, milk in a dream means prosperity, profit, receiving money. The more milk you see in a dream, the greater benefits this dream promises you. Drink goat milk in a dream - a sign of a happy and prosperous future. Drinking fresh milk in a dream portends joy and prosperity. Hot milk in a dream means disputes, discord over inheritance or property. Drinking a lot of milk in a dream means big expenses. The dream warns you about the need to be thrifty and not throw money away. Drinking milk in a dream and seeing that it does not decrease is a sure sign that you can afford to live without counting a penny. Sometimes such a dream predicts endless happiness. Spilling milk in a dream is a sign that you will foolishly give away your money yourself, believing false promises. You will never get this money back. Pouring milk over the top is a harbinger of abundance and prosperity. Sucking milk from the breast in a dream is a sign of illness or an immoral act, unless there are pregnant women among your loved ones or you yourself are not pregnant. For the poor, such a dream predicts wealth.

For a man to see milk oozing from his chest in a dream, the dream predicts that soon some misfortune will happen to his wife and he himself will be forced to take care of the children. However, more often such a dream means that the sleeper will always be able to provide himself with bread and butter. Bathing in milk or seeing a river of milk in a dream is a sign of fulfillment of your wildest desires. Buying milk in a dream is a sign of deception or vain hopes. Boiling it in a dream means that you will make an unforgivable mistake. If milk runs out of the pan in your dream, then your enemies will give you a head start because of your slowness. Spoiled milk in a dream - a sign of a quarrel or grief. Bargaining with a milk seller in a dream means quarrels and bickering over money or inheritance. Feeding someone milk in a dream indicates your affection for the person you are pampering. If you dream that they give you or add milk to you, then expect to receive easy money.

Subscribe to the Dream Interpretation channel!

Fear helped avoid being bitten, but prevented us from learning more about these mysterious creatures. And where precise knowledge was lacking, the gaps were filled by fantasies and conjectures, which became more and more sophisticated over the centuries.

And, despite the fact that many of these reptiles have already been quite well studied, old rumors and legends about snakes, passed down from generation to generation, still dominate the minds of people. To somehow break this vicious circle, we have collected 10 of the most common myths about snakes and refuted them.

Snakes drink milk

This myth became known to many of us thanks to Conan Doyle’s “The Speckled Band.” In fact, trying to feed a snake milk can be fatal: they do not digest lactose at all.

For unknown reasons, many people believe that snakes sting with their sharp, forked tongue. Snakes bite with their teeth, like all other animals. Language serves them for completely different purposes.

Before striking, snakes stick out their tongues threateningly.

As already stated, a snake's tongue is not intended to attack. The fact is that snakes do not have a nose, and all the necessary receptors are located on their tongue. Therefore, in order to better smell the scent of prey and determine its location, snakes have to stick out their tongues.

Most snakes are poisonous

Of the two and a half thousand species of snakes known to serpentologists, only 400 have poisonous teeth. Of these, only 9 are found in Europe. Most poisonous snakes in South America– 72 species. The rest are almost equally distributed across Australia, Central Africa, South-East Asia, Central and North America.

You can “safety” a snake by pulling out its teeth

This might actually work for a while. But the teeth will grow back, and the snake during the period of their growth, not being able to express the venom, can become seriously ill. And by the way, it is impossible to train a snake - for them, any person is nothing more than just a warm tree.

Snakes always attack when they see people

Statistics show that most often snakes bite people in self-defense. If a snake hisses and makes threatening movements when it sees you, it means it just wants to be left alone. As soon as you retreat a little, the snake will immediately disappear from view, rushing to save its life.

Snakes can be fed meat

Most snakes eat rodents, but there are species that eat frogs and fish and even insectivorous reptiles. And king cobras, for example, prefer only snakes of other species as food. So, what exactly to feed the snake depends only on the snake itself.

Snakes are cold to the touch

Snakes are typical representatives of cold-blooded animals. And therefore the body temperature of the snake will be the same as the temperature of the external environment. Therefore, without being able to support optimal temperature bodies (just above 30 ° C), snakes love to bask in the sun.

Snakes covered in mucus

Another story that has nothing to do with snakes. The skin of these reptiles contains virtually no glands and is covered with dense, smooth scales. It is from this pleasant-to-touch snake skin that shoes, handbags and even clothes are made.

Snakes wrap around branches and tree trunks

Quite often you can see the image of the tempting serpent entwining the trunk of the tree of knowledge. However, this has nothing to do with their actual behavior.

Snakes climb onto tree branches and lie on them, but they have absolutely no need to wrap their bodies around them.

Snakes are one of the most mysterious inhabitants of our planet. Primitive hunters, when meeting any snake, hurried to escape from it, knowing that just one bite could doom them to death. Fear helped avoid being bitten, but prevented us from learning more about these mysterious creatures. And where precise knowledge was lacking, the gaps were filled by fantasies and conjectures, which became more and more sophisticated over the centuries. And, despite the fact that many of these reptiles have already been quite well studied, old rumors and legends about snakes, passed down from generation to generation, still dominate the minds of people. To somehow break this vicious circle, we have collected 10 of the most common myths about snakes and refuted them.

Snakes drink milk

When attacking, snakes sting

Before striking, snakes stick out their tongues threateningly.

Most snakes are poisonous

You can “safety” a snake by pulling out its teeth

Snakes always attack when they see people

Snakes can be fed meat

Snakes are cold to the touch

Snakes covered in mucus

Snakes wrap around branches and tree trunks

Somehow the relationship with snakes did not work out for humans. For most peoples, the snake is a symbol of all worst traits: meanness and ingratitude, deceit and cold, merciless cruelty. And only in some cultures were snakes considered gods or companions of gods. But even where they were worshiped, they still tried to settle away from them. In any case, do not let them into the home: the presence of a legless reptile in the house was considered unacceptable. But there are no rules without exceptions. In a number of European countries, this exception was the most common snake of the temperate zone - the common grass snake.

Zoo center

Common - Natrix natrix
Type - chordates
Class - reptiles
Order - scaly
Suborder - snakes
Family - Colubridae
Rod - snakes

A medium-sized snake with a slender long body. The small oblong head is clearly separated from the neck. The tail is 3-5 times shorter than the body. The length is usually 0.8-1 meter, but specimens over 1.5 and even up to 2 meters in length are known. Females are noticeably larger than males. The color is quite variable: the upper side of the body is dark gray, olive, brown or black, often with darker spots located in a checkerboard pattern. The underside is dirty white or light gray, with a dark longitudinal stripe in the middle of the belly, but in some individuals this stripe occupies almost the entire bottom side. Characteristic- two symmetrical spots on the back of the head, on the border with the neck, usually yellow or orange, sometimes off-white. Rarely there are individuals without spots. The range of snakes in the north includes southern Karelia and central Sweden (where in some places it reaches the Arctic Circle), in the west - the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles, in the south - the northern coast of Africa (up to the Sahara), in the east - Transbaikalia and central Mongolia. Hibernation V middle lane Russia from October - November to March - April. The mating season is from April to May, egg laying is in July - August. There are known cases of autumn mating (with egg laying after wintering). Reaches sexual maturity at 3-4 years. Life expectancy is 19-23 years. It tolerates captivity well, is unpretentious in maintenance, and is easily tamed. Capable of living in anthropogenic landscapes, urban forest parks, and even directly in populated areas, however, it suffers greatly from motor transport: snakes crawling onto the asphalt to warm themselves often die under the wheels of a car. Therefore, in densely populated areas, the number of snakes is rapidly declining, but in general the species is not in danger.

The territory where snakes can be found is extremely wide. They live in almost any landscape: in forests of all types, in meadows, in river floodplains, in swamps, in the steppe, in the mountains, even in gardens and urban wastelands. The only mandatory requirement for their habitat is a non-drying body of water, preferably standing or slowly flowing. Remaining in appearance a typically terrestrial snake and not having any special adaptations for life in water, he is so connected with it that this is reflected even in his Latin name: Natrix - "water snake" (literally "swimmer"). Snakes drink a lot and often, and bathe regularly. They can swim far and for a long time, and without a visible goal - just for the sake of the process itself, usually along the shore of a reservoir, without trying to either crawl onto land or swim further away. A case is described when a naturalist, following a swimming snake along the shore, counted 1800 steps. However, snakes have been spotted in the middle of large lakes, and even in the open sea, sometimes tens of kilometers from the nearest shore.

It moves along the surface of the reservoir in a characteristic “snake” style: the motionless neck sticks out vertically from the water, and the body and tail bend in a wave-like manner in the horizontal plane. But it also swims well underwater, hunts there, and sometimes seems to rest, lying for a long time on the bottom or wrapped around an underwater snag.

It also finds its main prey in and around the water - frogs and small fish. At one time it was even considered a serious pest of fisheries, although this was a clear exaggeration: with its modest appetites, the water-loving snake has virtually no effect on the number of fish fry. In addition, the nimble fish is not a very easy prey: no matter how magnificently the snake swims, it still cannot keep up with it. He waits for the moment when the prey is close, and makes a swift lunge.

The tactics for hunting frogs are different: it catches them on land, actively pursuing them. Its movements during the hunt are graceful and swift, but even a medium-sized frog could easily get away from the snake by making several large leaps. However, for some reason the frogs do not do this and generally seem to underestimate the danger of the snake. He, as a rule, easily overtakes a stupid victim, and then the hardest part begins.

The fact is that the snake does not have any special devices for killing prey. He simply swallows any caught game alive. But if there are no problems with fish - the slippery, streamlined prey goes straight into the stomach, then swallowing a frog can be difficult, especially since the snake is not always able to grab it from its head. Although its mouth and throat, like those of many snakes, can stretch greatly, a huge meal can last for several hours. However, there is no hurry: even if the frog manages to escape, he will immediately grab it again. On the other hand, after such a lunch, the next time you will get hungry is at least five days later. If necessary, he can live for months without food at all. One German zoologist of the 19th century did not feed a captured snake for more than 10 months - from June to April, and all this time the snake was in an active state and did not try to hibernate. By the end of the record hunger strike, he had lost noticeably weight, but remained quite healthy. When the experimenter finally gave in and fed the prisoner, he did not have any digestive problems.

Frogs and fish are the main diet of this snake, but in principle, almost any animal of suitable size can serve as food for the snake. Its menu regularly includes newts, lizards and even toads. On occasion, he diversifies his diet with a chick that has fallen from the nest or a newborn baby water rat. The snakes readily catch insects, especially slow-moving ones such as caterpillars, or eat various larvae. Many European peoples have a belief that snakes manage to milk domestic cows by sucking on the udder. This, of course, is a fantasy: snake jaws, lacking soft lips, are poorly suited for sucking. In addition, snakes, like snakes in general, are afraid of ungulates and, even when settling in human buildings, they avoid cow stalls and sheep sheds. However, in captivity, many snakes actually drink milk, which is actually quite surprising. Even most mammals are able to digest this product only in childhood: as they grow up, the synthesis of the enzyme that breaks down milk sugar - lactose - stops. In principle, reptiles should not have such an enzyme. However, drinking milk does not seem to cause any trouble for snakes. But, of course, they do not eat plant foods; they also neglect carrion.

A moderate eater and a dexterous hunter, he spends little time getting food. It is active mainly during daylight hours, but prefers to hunt in the morning or evening. During the day, snakes bask more in the sun somewhere on a large stone, stump, flat or fallen trunk, hummock or some other “solarium”. At night they go into shelters - piles of stones, rodent holes, voids in the ground from rotten tree roots. The meaning is clear: in our latitudes, even in summer, the nights are quite cool, and within an hour or two after sunset the remaining open place the snake cools down, becomes inactive and turns into a ready meal for the first predator that comes along. And the list of those who are not averse to feasting on snakes is long: almost all large and medium-sized predatory mammals (from hedgehogs and weasels to raccoon dogs and foxes) and many predatory and simply quite large (such as storks or herons) birds. Young snakes are attacked by rats and even... large frogs.

Therefore, the demand for shelters among the dinner population is always high, and there is always a shortage of them. And when a person comes to the habitat of snakes, the snakes willingly master the shelters he has built, settling under the decking of bridges and gates, in garbage dumps and in compost heaps, in barns, chicken coops, bathhouses, basements and cellars, and even right in houses (although usually still under the floor). Back in the 19th century, grass snakes were quite common in Russian, Lithuanian, and German villages. If the peasants were not very happy about the creeping tenants, then, in any case, they did not try to get rid of them: it was believed that the death of a “pet” snake brings misfortune. In addition, it has an important advantage: it practically cannot cause any harm to a person. All that he is capable of in self-defense is to regurgitate food from the stomach (if there is any there), emit a stream of foul-smelling liquid from the other end of the body, and fall into thanatosis (“feigned death”). Snake bites are almost painless, and most often when caught, these snakes do not bite at all. And in captivity or when living in a house, they quickly get used to people and stop using their chemical weapons.

Snakes also need reliable shelters for another purpose - wintering. Its timing varies: on the northern and northeastern borders of its range, snakes can sleep for 8-8.5 months a year. However, even in central Russia, these reptiles go to winter only at the end of October or even in November, and wake up immediately after the snow melts. Several years ago, the author observed a quite vigorous and active grass snake in the March forest. True, spring then turned out to be unusually early and warm. For wintering, these reptiles use shelters of the same type as for overnight stays, but more extensive. It is necessary that they do not freeze; a pile of stones or a pile of dead wood is not suitable for this. Such places are in short supply, so the most comfortable and spacious winter apartments are filled with several snakes, or even several dozen. Such a neighborhood avoids conflicts, even if snakes of other species spend the winter together with the snakes. In general, it must be said, the relationships in the dinner community are difficult for a person to understand: it seems that he never (except for the mating season) seeks the company of his own kind, but he also has nothing against him. Snakes do not protect the borders of their possessions and sometimes even in summer gather in large quantities on limited area, but at the same time they don’t seem to notice each other.

Soon after waking up from winter sleep It's time for dinner weddings. Its timing is very variable, depending on the region and on specific weather conditions, but general rule is that mating games begin after the first molt of the new season (and it most often occurs after the capture and digestion of the first prey). At this time, you can observe the so-called “mating balls”, consisting of one female and several (up to 20) males. The snakes intertwine furiously, but at the same time, as far as can be judged, do not cause any damage to each other. In July - August, females lay from several to several dozen eggs (the registered record is over a hundred), which are covered not with a shell, but with a soft, leathery shell. To prevent them from dying from drying out, females look for a moist and at the same time fairly warm shelter, for example, a pile of rotten leaves, a fairly thick cushion of moss or a rotten stump. When there are few such places, snakes use them collectively. Once upon a time, lying in a forest clearing old door about 1,200 dinner eggs were discovered.

Having laid the last egg, the female leaves the laying site at least until next year. If everything goes well, then after 5-8 weeks small snakes 11-15 centimeters long emerge from the eggs. The first task in their independent life is to find a place for their first wintering: on the calendar it is already the end of summer or the beginning of autumn. It would be nice to meet the winter well-fed, but this is not necessary: ​​even if the snake does not catch anything, the reserves taken from the egg will be enough for it to survive until spring. True, it will grow more slowly. But when dinner is peaceful, this is not so important.

Photo by Nikolay Shpilenok