Happy Thought for 31 January 2025

Have a Happy Thought: 

You’ve made it through another year! No, it’s not 2026 yet... it’s the Lunar New Year for many in east and southeast Asia. We are now entering the year of the snake. 

 

So here are some very cool things I have learned about snakes. 

 

Another term used in the Chinese Zodiac for snakes is “little dragon”, which is very applicable to snakes like the Spiny Bush Viper (Atheris hispida) 

hairy bush viperImage: ©reptiles4all/Shutterstock.com 

 

Many snakes give birth to live young – most vipers and sea snakes as well as rattlesnakes and boas, are viviparous – giving birth to live young rather than laying eggs. This is about 30% of all snake species, and tends to happen more often in colder environments that would not keep eggs warm enough to develop fully.  

 

Image: Adult and young Rattlesnakes. Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/animal/rattlesnake#/media/1/492126/161972 

 

Related bonus fact: there’s an amphibian (that admittedly looks kinda like a snake because it doesn’t have legs) that makes a milk-like substance to feed its young.  

 

Snakes were (and are!) seen as symbols of intelligence and healing, across many cultures. In ancient Greece, for example, a single snake climbed up the staff of Asclepius, the “father of medicine” - hence this symbol being used by a lot of the medical field today.  

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By original file by Michael F. Mehnert - File:Asklepios - Statue Epidauros Museum 2008-09-11.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8718607 

 

Some medicine-related fields and companies use the similar-looking but very-different Caduceus of Hermes, which shows two snakes climbing up a staff, with winged heads (Hermes was the messenger god after all – and wings help you get around!) 

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Image: By Original: Rama Vector: Eliot Lash - Own work based on: Caduceus large.jpg by Eliot Lash., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=662346  

 

Snakes with wings don’t actually exist... but some snakes can fly glide. The Chrysolepelea snakes of southeast asia basically flatten their bodies, even going so far as to flatten out their ribcages, to help them glide from tree to tree. 

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Image: Ornate Flying Snake, LA Dawson, CC BY-SA 2.5 

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