Snakes
are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can
be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external
ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered
in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with many more joints
than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than
their heads with their highly mobile jaws. To accommodate their narrow bodies,
snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other
instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species
retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the
cloaca.
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