National Serpent Day

What the day is

National Serpent Day is observed on February 1. Serpent is simply an older word for snake, and the day covers the whole group: roughly four thousand species of legless, scaled reptiles found on every continent except Antarctica.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented, and no founder or sponsoring organization is reliably known.

The animals repay attention. Snakes are squamates that lost their limbs over evolutionary time, and almost everything about them is built around swallowing prey whole. Their jaws are not fused at the front and the skull has additional mobile joints, so the mouth can open around animals considerably wider than the head. Paired organs such as kidneys sit one behind the other rather than side by side, to fit a long narrow body.

Their senses are unusual rather than poor. Snakes flick the tongue to collect airborne particles and deliver them to a sensory organ in the roof of the mouth, effectively tasting the air to track prey. They have no external ears and sense vibration through the jaw. Pit vipers, pythons and some boas have heat-sensing pits that detect warm bodies in complete darkness.

Most snakes are not dangerous to people. Of the four thousand or so species, a small minority are venomous and fewer still are medically significant to humans. Snakebite is nonetheless a serious global health problem, concentrated in rural agricultural regions with limited access to antivenom, and the World Health Organization classifies it as a neglected tropical disease. The animals also do substantial unpaid work controlling rodent populations around farms and grain stores.

How to take part

• Learn the species where you live. In most places the snakes you will actually meet are harmless, and knowing which is which removes most of the fear.
• Leave them alone if you find one. A large share of bites occur when people try to kill or move a snake.
• Visit a zoo or reptile house and look at the heat pits and jaw structure up close.
• Support antivenom access if you want the most useful thing to do with the day.
• If you are afraid of them, read about one species properly. Specific knowledge tends to displace general dread.