Environmental Art Show - Virtual Exhibit

Snakes are ectotherms ("cold-blooded" animals), and temperature affects every aspect of their lives. Unlike mammals and birds, they cannot regulate their temperature by using internal heat generated by metabolic activity. Instead, snakes vary their locations and behaviors to maintain a proper body temperature. The behaviors include basking in the sun on cool days, seeking shade on hot days, and huddling with other snakes during the winter.

Snakes' bodies are covered in scales, hardened folds in the outer layers of the skin. In addition to providing protection for the snake's body, scales aid in locomotion, allowing the snake to precisely control the amount of friction needed to move along a particular surface. Garter snakes have keeled (ridged) scales, which are thought to help with camouflage.

Snakes can raise the front part of their bodies straight and high into the air, a behavior called periscoping. In addition to the information they gain through their other senses, periscoping gives snakes a better view over obstacles in their path, and it helps them detect predators and prey.

While snakes of many species are thought of as solitary, garter snakes have well-documented social interactions. They brumate (overwinter) in groups of hundreds of snakes, and interact both in the fall when they return to their brumation sites, and again in the spring when they emerge to mate. Garter snakes have been observed and documented to have preferred "friends" with whom they seek interaction.

Similarly to tongue flicking, yawning allows a snake to gather chemical cues from its environment. But snakes also yawn to adjust their jaws before or after a meal, which they swallow whole. A garter snake's diet is dependent on where it lives, but generally they eat earthworms, slugs and snails, small frogs, and small rodents.

Unlike most snakes, which lay clutches of eggs, garter snakes are ovoviviparous: they bear live young from eggs that are incubated inside the snake's body. Although the extremes are uncommon, a garter snake may produce between two and 100 babies per season! Garter snakes of the same species, even from the same litter, display a wide variety of colors and patterns.

This snake's opaque blue eye scales indicate that it is ready to shed its skin. Snakes shed their skins several times per year as they grow. Just before the snake is ready to shed, fluid builds up to loosen the outer layer of skin, which causes the blue appearance of the eyes. Their reduced vision makes snakes more vulnerable to predation, so during the pre-shedding period, they tend to remain hidden.

Snakes typically rely on camouflage and their ability to stay out of sight, and will move away quickly from a potential threat. Only when cornered will they engage in active defensive behaviors such as bluffing, musking, displaying teeth, or, usually as a last resort, striking. Common predators of snakes are carnivorous mammals such as raccoons, foxes, and domestic cats; birds of prey such as hawks; and even other snakes!

Snakes flick their tongues to detect scents in their environment. Their tongues retrieve chemical particles from the air and the ground and deliver them to the snake's mouth, where the vomeronasal (Jacobson's) organ is located. This organ detects pheromones and other chemical signals, and the forked nature of the tongue allows the snake's brain to determine the distance to prey items and other snakes.