Page 95 - Engineering in Nature

Harun Yahya

victim like a spring. By this time it has already sunk its fangs, in its
jaw that can open up to 180 degrees, into its prey. All this takes place
at a speed equivalent to a car reaching 90 km/hour (55 mile/hour) in
half a second.

In incapacitating its prey, the snake's most important weapon are
its poison fangs, which can be as long as 4 cm (1.5 inches). These are
hollow, connected to a venom gland whose muscles contract when
the snake bites to inject the venom under high pressure—from the
fang's canal to under the skin of the victim. Snake venom either paral-
yses the victim's central nervous system, or else kills it by congealing
its blood.

• How Do Snakes Tell Whether a Heat -Emitting Body is Prey or
Not?
An experiment determined that the snake identifies whether a
source of heat represents genuine prey by its heat sensors and forked
tongue working together. In total darkness, a hot sandbag and a dead
animal were left out in front of a snake, who first moved towards the
sandbag, but did not try to swallow it. Although the dead animal
emitted no heat, the snake examined it with its tongue when it came
across it, and then began eating it. These two sensory systems have
been created with features that complement one another. Were that
not so, the snake would waste its time in attacking every heat source
it encountered.
It is astonishingly apt that the snakes' night vision system should
be able to establish another animal's location accurately and that it
should have the equipment necessary to kill it with venom.
Of course, those who deny the existence of God can't explain how

Adnan Oktar
93