Free Republic

The Texas rat snake was just as much of a speed demon as deadly vipers, challenging long-held notions about snake adaptations. When a snake strikes, it literally moves faster than the blink of an eye, whipping its head forward so quickly that it can experience accelerations of more than 20 Gs. Such stats come from studies of how a snake lunges, bites and kills, which have focused mostly on vipers, in part because these snakes rely so heavily on their venomous chomps. "It's the lynchpin of their strategy as predators," says Rulon Clark at San Diego State University. "Natural selection...

It’s raining snakes in Washington, DC Police reports in the Adams Morgan area of our nation’s capital detail recent occurrences of snakes falling out of trees and onto children. Police believe the intimidating inhabitants of Walter Pierce park to be black rat snakes, WTOP reports. The snakes fell out of trees in a playground near the National Zoo, which caused panic among the children. Black rat snakes are not poisonous, but they do constrict their small prey to kill it. The responding officer was able to capture a small one in a water bottle. Officials at the zoo said there...