Like all reptiles snakes are cold-blooded or more correctly ectothermic – they cannot produce their own body heat, instead they rely on the sun to heat their bodies. Because they do not rely on energy from food to generate body heat snakes can survive on an extremely meagre diet. Some wait for months between successive meals and few biting of small pieces. ,many snakes have specialized jaws that enable them to swallow animals that are far larger their own heads. Although uncommon some snakes such as African the African rock python have been observed eating animals as large as an antelope or small cow With over two thousand five hundred species belonging to more than ten families snakes are a large and successful group. They owe much of this success to their versatility snakes occupy habitat ranging from underground borrows to the top of the tree, to ocean depth as great as one hundred and fifty meters they are found on every continent except Antarctica and although they most abundant I tropical areas. Many survive in the regions marked by the extreme cold the only places without snakes are part of the polar regions and isolated islands such as the republic of Ireland and new Zealand as opposed to places in Nigeria like plateau and Gombe states in the Northern par where there is a large population of snakes Adapted from Microsoft Encarta premium (2009)
