• Animals (Kingdom Animalia)

• Chordates (Phylum Chordata)

• Vertebrates (Subphylum Vertebrata)

• Reptiles (Class Reptilia)

• ​Snakes and Lizards (Order Squamata)

• Snakes (Suborder Serpentes)

​

Suborder Serpentes comprises the snakes, a highly specialized group of limbless reptiles within the order Squamata. With more than 4,000 living species, snakes are found on every continent except Antarctica and inhabit an extraordinary variety of environments, including tropical rainforests, deserts, grasslands, wetlands, mountains, caves, freshwater ecosystems, and oceans. They are characterized by elongated, limbless bodies, highly flexible skulls with loosely connected jaw bones that allow them to swallow prey much larger than their heads, and bodies covered with overlapping scales.