SERPENT SENSES
Discover how these reptiles hear, see and smell
WORDS SCOTT DUTFIELD
For around 128.5 million years, snakes have been slithering around sniffing out prey – just not how you might think. Although snakes have nostrils, most of their ability to smell comes from using their tongues. In the same way that odorous particles are hoovered up by human noses, snakes lap up scent particles in the air by flicking their tongues. When the tongue is retracted into its mouth, all the particles that it’s collected are delivered to a sensory organ called the J acobson’s organ, also called the vomeronasal organ. The scent particles then bind to receptors in the organ and send that information to the snake’s brain for processing and interpretation. Snakes use this keen sense of smell to ‘taste’ chemical compounds released into the air by prey while they are on the hunt.