The biggest snake and the smallest snake.
Snakes vary greatly in size. Among the non-venomous snakes, the blind snakes and the creeping snakes are the smallest. Like earthworms, the small blind snake is only 9 cm long and can be placed on the palm of your hand. Python is the biggest. The anaconda living in South America, also called the boa constrictor, is a semi-aquatic and semi-arboreal snake, with a total length of over 1 1m, a girth of 1.2m and a weight of 137kg. It is the largest and longest snake alive now. The python caught in the Asia-Europe net can reach10m in length and weigh about120kg. Rock Python in Africa is 8 meters long. Pythons produced in southern China can be more than 7 meters long and weigh 70 kilograms. However, compared with the extinct python, these snakes are not big. As early as 50 million years ago, the python lived on the present ground, with a total length of more than 18 meters.
There are many records about snakes in ancient China. Qu Yuan's Tian Wen has a story about "A snake swallowed an elephant. What is its big mystery?" This refers to a legendary snake called Bashu, which lives in the south. Shan Hai Jing says that it is 800 feet long and can eat elephants. It takes three years to remove its bones. Jin Zhanghua's Natural History also said that "a python has a wide mouth." In the book Youyang Miscellaneous Group written by Duan in the Tang Dynasty, it is recorded that "the viper is ten feet long and often swallows deer, but the deer does not have bones around the tree". In Liu Xun's Record of Ridges in the Tang Dynasty, this description is more detailed, saying, "Snakes are five or six feet high ... In spring and summer, deer above medium size in the mountains will take it and swallow it from the tail, but the head horn will be the first in the tree because of its mouth. Once the deer is broken, its head horn will fall to the ground and the deer will swallow its stomach. "
Among poisonous snakes, the smallest one is probably the welding head of Taiwan Province Province, which is only 252 ~ 478 mm long. The largest poisonous snake is king cobra, which is nearly 6 meters long and weighs about 12 kg.
In the same kind of snake, the female snake is generally larger than the male snake, and the body cavity of the female snake should have enough space for the development of eggs or embryos.
People are afraid of snakes, so some rumors about snakes are often inaccurate or exaggerated. Some people say that there is a big snake somewhere in Yunnan, which is across the road and the car can't pass. This is unlikely, because even the biggest python can't stop the car. 10 years ago, it was said that a big snake was caught in Changbai Mountain, which was as long as three train carriages. This is an unfounded rumor, because there are only 1 1 species of snakes in the three northeastern provinces, the largest of which is the brown-black golden snake, which is only more than two meters long. Moreover, there is no snake longer than a carriage in the world. A snake has just swallowed a big animal, and a certain part of its body (where its stomach is) will swell up, but it is not as thick as a big pillar. The rumored snake is said to be particularly thick, probably because people spread it more and more exaggeratedly.