Abstract
A STRUCTURAL peculiarity of the “king cobra” which I have recently ascertained while studying the anatomy of the Ophidia seems to me to be so remarkable that it must have been noticed in such comprehensive works as Bronn's “Thierreich” and Dr. Gadow's account of serpents in the “Cambridge Natural History” were it known. I venture, therefore, to give a short account of the matter without professing to have made an exhaustive survey of the literature Of the group. The windpipe of this snake opens, as usual, not far from the heart into the lung, which presents no remarkable divergencies from the lungs of other snakes; it is in the same way functional as a lung for the first half, and becomes a mere thin-walled air bag posteriorly. Before opening into the lung, however, the trachea is connected with a long series of approximately equi-sized air sacs in the neck, which follow close upon each other, and entirely occupy the neck down to the region where the heart lies. These sacs are so closely adpressed that the appearance given is that of a series of septa, dividing the space surrounding the windpipe and gullet into metamerically arranged compartments. I thought at first, in fact, that I had been able to observe a segmentation of the claim in this region quite analogous to that of an annelid. Each cavity, however, is continuous with the interior of the windpipe by an oval and clearly defined orifice on its lower surface. These apertures are regular and of fairly equal size, and give to the windpipe quite the appearance of a flute. There are a large number of them, thirty to forty. There is no question here of pathological conditions or of accidental cuts. The regularly disposed series of sacs into which they open negatives anything of the kind. They are, I suppose, an extreme modification of what the late Prof. Cope termed the “tracheal lung” in Chersydrus and other snakes. The most obviously comparable structure that I can think of for the moment is the ventral slit in the windpipe of the emu, which similarly opens into a thin-walled sac. This is believed to be connected with the singular “drumming” sound emitted by that bird. Perhaps some of your readers who are acquainted with the Hamadryad can inform me as to a possible “voice,” or whether it can produce a varied or especially prolonged hiss. I propose to offer a more detailed account of the structure of the wind pipe and other organs of this snake to the Zoological Society as soon as possible.
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BEDDARD, F. A Little-known Peculiarity of the Hamadryad Snake. Nature 68, 623 (1903). https://doi.org/10.1038/068623a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/068623a0
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