How Do Snakes Smell Their Environment

Just as every other animal have sense of smell so do snakes also. Snakes have nostril but not developed enough to enable them perceive much thing around their environment. For that reason snakes are known to use combination of their tongue and nostril to smell their environment. That can be accounted to the reason why snakes always flick their tongues up and down while moving around. You are going to learn all you need to know about snake sense of smell through the contents of this post.



Snakes Smell Their Environment by Flicking Their Tongue
Have you found snake in your backyard and wonder why it is busy flicking the tongue up and down and even left to right? If yes, you should know that the snake is just trying to smell the environment by collecting the chemical particle in the environment which it will send to the Jacobson’s organ for easy interpretation of the smell. Through the chemical particular collected by snakes on the air they can tell which direction the smell is coming from and the meaning of the smell around them.

The Special Organ That Help Snakes Smell Their Environment with Flicking of Tongue
To avoid becoming meal to predators snakes normally smell their environment with the help of both their nostril and the flicking tongue. They will know the direction of the predators so as to know the best way to retract or defend them from any form of attack. The ability of snakes to smell the environment makes it easy for them to notice presence of predators around and know decide on the best way to avoid danger. The special organ used by snake when it wants to smell the environment by flicking the tongue is vomeronasal system.

How Snake Notice the Direction of the Prey by Smelling Their Environment
Apart from taking note of the direction of predators or the distance of mate around, snake normally make use of the chemical particulars collected on the air by flicking the tongue to know the direction and distance of their prey. In that regard, most snake prey does not notice presence of snake before they will be captured by snake and use as meal.

Snake Use Sense of Smell to Notice Presence of Female Ready to Mate
Most female snake species normally release pheromone to indicate their readiness to mate with any male snake around. For that reason, male snake will smell the pheromone in the environment by flicking their tongue and will be able to follow the smell to the particular location of the female snake.