snakes motabolism

?Snakes Metabolism Eating, or ingesting food, is one of the main characteristics of the animal kingdom. Most of these animals metabolize their food at a rapid passe. But the metabolism of a snake is much slower then many other animals. This is due to one major factor. That is the temperature in which their bodies are. The metabolism works the same as other animals. It is just slower in a snake. The metabolism needs to be slower since the snake doesn?t eat very often. This paper will prove that a snakes metabolism is slow because of 4 different reasons: A. behavior B. evolution C. temperature D. lifestyle. Most animals (including humans) eat at least once a day. If we go longer then about a week we could die of starvation. This is because our metabolic rate is fast. It burns whatever food we eat to make energy. When there is no more food to burn then we need to eat again. We do not store food for long periods of time either. Snakes on the other hand don?t have to eat half as much as we do. They can eat about once a month and still be well fed. Snakes can even go for a full year without food. Of course this wouldn?t be very healthy, but they would be able to survive. The reason snake can do this is b

" Their temperature rises and falls with theweather. This is another reason that the metabolic rate is slower. In fact theyoften hibernate over winter like mammals. Since eating (for asnake) takes a lot of energy, they once again to not eat very often. They eat when the food comes to themand they bask in the sun all day. this is why they can go longer without food. Not verydifferent from carnivorous lizards, frogs, salamanders, or even fish. " Their temperature rises andfalls with the weather. and a lot of the energy is still lost asheat. Snakes, lizards, fish -- in fact allliving things except birds and mammals -- are "ectotherms. Some snakes can easily go months without eating. The huge advantage to this is that they don't have to eat anything near as muchas an endotherm.