Live Births

[Garter_Gertie]

Wayne, thanks! Yesterday I was telling Dave about the live birth pics I'd seen as he wanted to see them, too. Found them again and then he explained to me rather than a placenta [the blood vessels and all] it was still an egg, in that the baby snake got all it's nutrients from what is inside the sac and not from the mother.

It is nice to get properly edjamacated and wrong misconceptions corrected.

[infernalis]

Stick around a while, you'll get all kinds of edumicated

To relate, as a child I thought snakes were "neato" I was only 7 or 8 the first time I ever got bit. But I still could not leave them alone, if one crawled in front of me, reflex dive and scoop it up.

I did that with a rattler at age 12, "look mom, this one is different"
Of course I had no frickin idea what I was holding, except a snake.

Well it's 30+ years later, and I realize that I am only beginning to learn the good stuff. These creatures are very fascinating, once upon a time it was thought that a snake ONLY had 2 primary reasons to exist, Eat & Breed. After all what else could an animal with no limbs do?

Now it is thought that maybe something else may also be going on inside those little brains.

It has taken eons for mankind to relate to snakes other than the evil serpent that tempted with apples in the garden of eden, or the mythological Medusa with snakes for hair. Snakes invoke fear in many, a fear so strong they will murder on sight.

Imagine if Great Britain had an abundance of rodent eating snakes kept in the barns and grain storage & crawling in the castles during the dark ages, an easy solution that would have spared millions of human lives.

Unwitting peasants & nobility chopped up the solution to the plague, and never thought twice.

And if someone challenges you, simply say that once upon a time, the world was flat and anyone who spoke otherwise was burned for witchcraft. Then let them hold Winnie

[Steven@HumboldtHerps]

I just felt I had to clarify something in regards to garter births, or for that matter, most reptilian "live births". Garter snakes do not give true "live birth" as compared to placental mammals.

The original assumption (always bad, but even in science sometimes needed in order to get things going!) was closer to the truth, as in egg shells disolving and such... except their really isn't much of an egg shell in the first place! It's a membrane. Here are the 3 words we need to compare:

Viviparous - where developing eggs nurtured by the mother and then continuously nurtured until birth via umbilicus. All mammals, except 2!

Oviparous - where developing eggs are initially nurtured by mother and later embryos are nurtured by a placental yolk within the egg/ incubated and hatched (shell) independent of mother. Lots of critters! Reptiles, birds, bugs....

Ovoviviparous - where developing eggs are initially nurtured by mother and later embryos are nurtured by a placental yolk within the egg/ "incubated" and "hatched' (slipping through the membrane - no shell) via the mother.

Garter snakes, most vipers, most boas... are all OVOVIVIPAROUS!

At least that's what I have learned. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[Stefan-A]

Ovoviviparous - where developing eggs are initially nurtured by mother and later embryos are nurtured by a placental yolk within the egg/ "incubated" and "hatched' (slipping through the membrane - no shell) via the mother.

Garter snakes, most vipers, most boas... are all OVOVIVIPAROUS!

At least that's what I have learned. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I agree with you.

I think it was fairly recently that they started using the word "ovoviviparous". In all the books I have, right up until the ones printed in the 90's, they still talk about reptiles being "viviparous" vs. "oviparous". I understand if people use the word viviparous in this context.

[drache]

it's a cumbersome word
maybe one could drop a syllable or two and it would move into common usage
but really - try saying out loud a couple of times without feeling you're stuttering

[Garter_Gertie]

Nah. Not new. Ovoviviparous was around in the '70's.

I'd forgotten all those terms. "Live birth" is redundant anyway. All births are live no matter the means of security prior to the birth.

I'd always known by eduction the ovoviviparous way of the garter. But in SEEING the pictures the ol' eye-mind took over (along with the fact I'd learned those terms almost 40 years ago and had totally forgotten about them...) and I *saw* placentas, e.g., nuturing sacs. Know what I mean? I saw what I was more familiar with (transference of information) than what I really saw.

Kicker is the lack of the embilical cord. For me. Also the growth from the inside out vs. nutrients from the mother. But the lack of the embilical cord is, to me, the biggest difference.

[Garter_Gertie]

I guess you could call the sacks goushy eggs, huh? I mean an egg doesn't HAVE to be hard, does it?

[Stefan-A]

Nah. Not new. Ovoviviparous was around in the '70's.

It probably was around long before that. But it seems to me that it wasn't used as much in this context, as viviparous was.

[Steven@HumboldtHerps]

Funny thing though... Snakes do have an umbilical of sorts attached within the egg.

Which reminds me of a very UNfunny incident I had years ago, when a hatchling corn snake of mine (I hate this word...) ahem! disemboweled (always icky) itself because its umbilicus stuck to the plastic of the container the eggs were in....
and it apparently kept tugging to get away. When I noticed this, it was already too late. It was a rather traumatic experience for me.
Soooo. .. just in case you're incubating, try to always add some extra incubation substrate up along the walls of the container....

Steve