Snakes
Serpentes
Snakes are elongated, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most...
28 branches of this suborder, most-observed first · about 4,202 known species
Colubrid Snakes
familyColubridae
Vipers
familyViperidae
Elapid Snakes
familyElapidae
Boas
familyBoidae
Pythons
familyPythonidae
Blind snakes
infraorderScolecophidia
Sand Snakes
familyPsammophiidae
Lamprophiid Snakes
familyLamprophiidae
Slug Snakes
familyPareidae
Madagascar Brook Snakes
familyPseudoxyrhophiidae
Mud Snakes
familyHomalopsidae
Asian mock vipers
familyPsammodynastidae
Mole and Western Keeled Snakes
familyPseudaspididae
Atractaspidid Snakes
familyAtractaspididae
Sunbeam Snakes
familyXenopeltidae
Xenodermid Snakes
familyXenodermidae
Shield-tailed Snakes
familyUropeltidae
Asian Pipe Snakes
familyCylindrophiidae
Dwarf Boas
familyTropidophiidae
Shovel-Snouts
familyProsymnidae
Aquatic File Snakes
familyAcrochordidae
False Coral Snakes
familyAniliidae
Mexican Burrowing Pythons
familyLoxocemidae
Philippine Water and Burrowing Snakes
familyCyclocoridae
Two-headed Snakes
familyMicrelapidae
Dwarf Pipe Snakes
familyAnomochilidae
Round Island Boas
familyBolyeriidae
Spine-jawed Snakes
familyXenophidiidae
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Serpentes in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 85553.