Losing legs was just the start of snakes' bizarre journey – to switch from barely being alive to eating an antelope takes re-engineering at the molecular level
SNAKE! Just the thought is enough to trigger a spasm of fear in many of us. Snakes make biologists' hearts beat faster, too, but for a different reason: in evolutionary terms, they may be the most surprising group of vertebrates on Earth.
Their long, legless bodies, it turns out, are the least remarkable thing about them. It's on the inside that snakes have made extraordinary changes. They have pared down their internal organs, mostly eliminating one lung and all but one lobe of the liver. They have evolved a novel heat-detecting sense organ and the most sophisticated venom system of any animal, and they can turn their ...
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