"When the cobra runs for her life, she goes like a whiplash flicked across a horse's neck," Rudyard Kipling wrote of the villainous cobra Nagaina in his story of the heroic mongoose Rikki-Tiki-Tavi.

Why did it have to be snakes? Because evolution puts snakes on a plain advantage, according to a new study co-authored by a Stony Brook University researcher. According to a new study, snakes are ...

The fossil record of squamates, encompassing both lizards and snakes, provides an intricate account of evolutionary innovation over millions of years. Fossils elucidate key morphological transitions, ...

A review of over 500 reports of cannibalistic behavior in snakes finds it's appeared multiple times in different evolutionary ...

“Our study shows how lizards and snakes evolved their disparate jaw shapes which adapted to their wide range of ecologies, diets, and habitats, driving their extraordinary diversity.” This work ...

A peculiar 37-million-year-old snake fossil, Paradoxophidion richardoweni, unearthed in England, is rewriting evolutionary timelines. Its unique vertebrae, unlike any known snake, suggest a lifestyle ...

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, new research shows that snakes deserve our recognition as evolutionary superstars. The study, published last week in the journal Science, found that snakes evolve faster than ...

How big they are: Can range from 4 inches (10 centimeters) to over 30 feet (9 meters) There are about 4,000 different snake species in the world today. They occupy a wide range of habitats — some ...

Eating your own kind might not sound like a winning survival strategy, but cannibalism is surprisingly common in the animal ...

Venom is a key adaptive innovation in snakes, and how nonvenom genes were co-opted to become part of the toxin arsenal is a significant evolutionary question. While this process has been investigated ...