Top 12 Most Amazing Snakes

The second new moon after the winter solstice has ushered in the Year of the Snake, which we’re marking with snake extremes -- from largest to most venomous.

While Chinese New Year is just underway, 2013 began with the discovery of a new venomous snake in January. The snake, Thelotornis usambaricus, was found in the northern Mozambique province of Nampula. It’s a type of back-fanged snake that belongs to the family Colubridae, illustrated here with the species Coluber caspius.

These snakes can be deadly. Their venom destroys red blood cells, disrupts clotting and can lead to tissue damage.

The Largest Snake that Ever Lived

The largest snake on Earth was the Titanoboa, which lived among the dinosaurs and ate their young, among other things. It weighed 2,500 pounds and grew to 43 feet long.

“It was not necessarily a specialized constrictor, but it clearly grabbed dinosaur hatchlings and gobbled them down,” Jason Head, a paleontologist and assistant professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, told Discovery News.

Largest Living Snake

The reticulated python, found in Southeast Asia, is the world’s longest snake still in existence. Adults can grow to over 28 feet in length.

Smallest Snake

The smallest living snake is Leptotyphlops carlae, which measures just 3.9 inches long. It was discovered four years ago under a rock on the western Atlantic island of Barbados.

Evolutionary biologist Blain Hedges of Penn State University told Discovery News that “almost anything could be a predator (of the tiny snake), including centipedes and spiders.”

Read more at Discovery News