Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery in Nature

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 365 pages
• Published by: University of California Press
• Edition: 1st Edition April 30, 2000
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0520224876
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0520224872
• Book Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 1.1 inches
• Weighs: 3.3 pounds

Product Review
Herpetologists are sure to rejoice at this information-dense study of the world's snakes, illustrated with more than 200 photographs of the reptiles in action. Harry W. Greene offers life histories of cobras and adders, of rattlers and constrictors, showing the amazing variety in what is, all in all, a fairly simple form. He discusses snake locomotion, adaptation, coloration, nomenclature, mimicry, and habits; and he offers a rigorous account of herp physiology, all the while peppering his scientific prose with personal notes on encounters with sometimes testy subjects around the world. He ends his absorbing book with a detailed discussion of issues in snake conservation, especially identifying and protecting key habitats that are in danger owing to human economic development. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal
awesome photographs enrich this anecdotal and scholarly narrative that lifts the lowly snake to loftier heights by presenting its unique evolutionary story.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This book is not an encyclopediac treatment of snakes, but rather a natural history of some of the 2,700 species of snakes that are currently recognized. Eight chapters are devoted to general topics in snake biology, including anatomy, feeding, venoms (more snakes are venomous than we used to think), predation and defense, social behavior, reproduction, evolution, and conservation. The illustrations supplied by world-acclaimed nature photographers Michael and Patricia Fogden are absolutely gorgeous---snakes in every aspect of their dangerous, seductive charm, including my favorite of Peringuey's Adder in Namibia. This snake's tail protrudes above the sand as a lure, and if you look very closely at the picture, you might make out eyes and head scales that are almost completely invisible between the grains of sand. It is quite startling to be looking at a pile of sand and suddenly see the outline of an adder's head. The author, Harry W. Greene is Curator of Herpetology in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He opens each chapter in 'Snakes' with an essay that considers the subject from a more personal perspective: many of his fellow herpetologists have been bitten by venomous snakes, and some have died. The essays lead to Greene's epilogue and his answer to the question, "Why snakes?" This book is a fascinating read. I sat down to learn more about garter snakes when I came across several of these handsome reptiles that were just emerging from hibernation. I soon found myself rereading the whole book. There are fourteen references in the index to 'Thamnophis sirtalis' (the common garter snake) but they are scattered throughout the book in interesting chapters such as "Diet and Feeding." I didn't know garter snakes were semi-aquatic and dined mainly on other watery creatures such as frogs. They also form mating balls which may stay together for two or three days---one female and multiple males. They spend the winter together in hibernaculums--one hibernaculum in Ontario was found to have over 6,000 garter snakes! The author's favorite reptiles are the venomous snakes, their ability to cause damage measured in the number of mice that would die from the poison injected through a single bite. "Drop for toxic drop, the Inland Taipan (Oxyuranus microlepidotus) wins hands down: a bite from this Australian cobra relative contains enough venom to kill two hundred thousand mice..." In the introductory essay, the author and some of his friends go scrambling through a Costa Rican rain forest, looking for the deadly Bushmaster (Crotalus mutus). They weren't bitten by the Bushmasters they found, just by "huge black ants with the most intensely painful and long-lasting sting of any hymenopteran." If you'd like to explore the beauty and seductive grace of these ancient reptiles against a detailed backdrop of their biology and natural history, I highly recommend that you read "Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery in Nature." I own the hard-bound version, and it is 315 pages of dense text and hypnotic photographs.