Komodo Reptile Scales

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Diapsida – two fenestrae – most reptiles, including lizards, snakes, crocodilians, dinosaurs and pterosaurs The scales around the eye are called circumorbital scales and are named as ocular scales but with appropriate prefixes. The ocular scale proper is a transparent scale covering the eye which is called the spectacle, brille or eyecap. [9] [23] The circumorbital scales towards the snout or the front are called preocular scales, those towards the rear are called postocular scales, and those towards the upper or dorsal side are called supraocular scales. Circumorbital scales towards the ventral or lower side, if any, are called subocular scales. Between the preocular and the postnasal scales are one or two scales called loreal scales. [22] Loreal scales are absent in elapids. a b c d e f g Greene, Harry W. (2004) Snakes – The Evolution of Mystery in Nature. University of California Press, pp. 22–23 ISBN 0520224876. The scales patterning may also be used for individual identification in field studies. Clipping of specific scales, such as the subcaudals, to mark individual snakes is a popular approach to population estimation by mark and recapture techniques. [30] Distinguishing between venomous and non-venomous snakes [ edit ] Banded Krait ( Bungarus fasciatus), an Elapid, with no loreal scale between nasal and pre-ocular scales. The benefit of a low resting metabolism is that it requires far less fuel to sustain bodily functions. By using temperature variations in their surroundings, or by remaining cold when they do not need to move, reptiles can save considerable amounts of energy compared to endothermic animals of the same size. [77] A crocodile needs from a tenth to a fifth of the food necessary for a lion of the same weight and can live half a year without eating. [78] Lower food requirements and adaptive metabolisms allow reptiles to dominate the animal life in regions where net calorie availability is too low to sustain large-bodied mammals and birds.

By the early 21st century, vertebrate paleontologists were beginning to adopt phylogenetic taxonomy, in which all groups are defined in such a way as to be monophyletic; that is, groups which include all descendants of a particular ancestor. The reptiles as historically defined are paraphyletic, since they exclude both birds and mammals. These respectively evolved from dinosaurs and from early therapsids, both of which were traditionally called "reptiles". [19] Birds are more closely related to crocodilians than the latter are to the rest of extant reptiles. Colin Tudge wrote:Osborn, H.F. (1903). "The reptilian subclasses Diapsida and Synapsida and [the] early history of Diaptosauria". Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History. 1: 451–507. Brysse, K. (2008). "From weird wonders to stem lineages: The second reclassification of the Burgess Shale fauna". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 39 (3): 298–313. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2008.06.004. PMID 18761282. The dorsal (or body) scales on the snake's body are arranged in rows along the length of their bodies. Adjacent rows are diagonally offset from each other. Most snakes have an odd number of rows across the body though certain species have an even number of rows e.g. Zaocys spp. [8] In the case of some aquatic and marine snakes, the scales are granular and the rows cannot be counted. [20]

Farmer, C.G. (2000). "Parental care: The key to understanding endothermy and other convergent features in birds and mammals". American Naturalist. 155 (3): 326–334. doi: 10.1086/303323. PMID 10718729. S2CID 17932602. Smith, Malcolm A. (1943) The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma including the whole of the Indo-Chinese Sub-region, Reptilia and Amphibia. Vol I – Loricata and Testudines, Vol II-Sauria, Vol III-Serpentes. Taylor and Francis, London. Excluding the head, snakes have imbricate scales, overlapping like the tiles on a roof. [20] Snakes have rows of scales along the whole or part of their length and also many other specialised scales, either singly or in pairs, occurring on the head and other regions of the body.

What Are the Adaptations a Lizard Has That Allow It to Live in the Desert?

Reptiles are generally considered less intelligent than mammals and birds. [29] The size of their brain relative to their body is much less than that of mammals, the encephalization quotient being about one tenth of that of mammals, [122] though larger reptiles can show more complex brain development. Larger lizards, like the monitors, are known to exhibit complex behavior, including cooperation [123] and cognitive abilities allowing them to optimize their foraging and territoriality over time. [124] Crocodiles have relatively larger brains and show a fairly complex social structure. The Komodo dragon is even known to engage in play, [125] as are turtles, which are also considered to be social creatures, [126] and sometimes switch between monogamy and promiscuity in their sexual behavior. [ citation needed] One study found that wood turtles were better than white rats at learning to navigate mazes. [127] Another study found that giant tortoises are capable of learning through operant conditioning, visual discrimination and retained learned behaviors with long-term memory. [128] Sea turtles have been regarded as having simple brains, but their flippers are used for a variety of foraging tasks (holding, bracing, corralling) in common with marine mammals. [129] Boulenger, George A., (1890), The Fauna of British India including Ceylon and Burma, Reptilia and Batrachia. Taylor and Francis, London. There is no simple way of differentiating a venomous snake from a non-venomous one merely by using a scale character. Finding out whether a snake is venomous or not is correctly done by identification of the species of a snake with the help of experts, [31] :190 or in their absence, close examination of the snake and using authoritative references on the snakes of the particular geographical region to identify it. Scale patterns help to indicate the species and from the references, it can be verified if the snake species is known to be venomous or not. Some snakes have extra sets of visual organs (in the loosest sense of the word) in the form of pits sensitive to infrared radiation (heat). Such heat-sensitive pits are particularly well developed in the pit vipers, but are also found in boas and pythons. These pits allow the snakes to sense the body heat of birds and mammals, enabling pit vipers to hunt rodents in the dark. [b] Longrich, Nicholas R.; Bhullar, Bhart-Anjan S.; Gauthier, Jacques A. (2012). "Mass extinction of lizards and snakes at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 109 (52): 21396–21401. Bibcode: 2012PNAS..10921396L. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1211526110. PMC 3535637. PMID 23236177.

Scales have been modified over time to serve other functions such as " eyelash" fringes, and protective covers for the eyes [2] with the most distinctive modification being the rattle of the North American rattlesnakes. Crocodilians have an anatomically four-chambered heart, similar to birds, but also have two systemic aortas and are therefore capable of bypassing their pulmonary circulation. [71] Metabolism [ edit ] Sustained energy output ( joules) of a typical reptile versus a similar size mammal as a function of core body temperature. The mammal has a much higher peak output, but can only function over a very narrow range of body temperature. For example, Iguanahearts, like the majority of the squamateshearts, are composed of three chambers with two aorta and one ventricle, cardiac involuntary muscles. [68] The main structures of the heart are the sinus venosus, the pacemaker, the left atrium, the right atrium, the atrioventricular valve, the cavum venosum, cavum arteriosum, the cavum pulmonale, the muscular ridge, the ventricular ridge, pulmonary veins, and paired aortic arches. [69] Karasov, W.H. (1986). "Nutrient requirement and the design and function of gutsMannena, Hideyuki; Li, Steven S.-L. (1999). "Molecular evidence for a clade of turtles". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 13 (1): 144–148. doi: 10.1006/mpev.1999.0640. PMID 10508547. The reptile has rough scales or bony plates covering the skin which are shed on a regular basis. These cold-blooded creatures cannot maintain a consistent internal body temperature and rely completely on the external environment to warm up or cool down.