Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1893 — THE SERPENT’S TONGUE. [ARTICLE]

THE SERPENT’S TONGUE.

It Often Obtrudes and Vibrates with a Warning Purpose. I have on numberless occasions observed the common pit viper of southern South America, which is of a sluggish disposition, lying in the sun on a bed of sand or dry grass, coiled or extended at full length. Invariably on approaching a snake of this kind I have seen the tongue exserted; that nimble, glistening organ was the first and for sometime the only sign of life or

wakefulness in the motionless creature. says the Fortnightly Review. If I stood still at a distance of some yards to watch it the tongue would be exserted again at mtervalsf ifT” moved nearer or lifted my arms or made any movement, the intervals would be shorter and the vibrations more rapid, and still the creature would not move. Only when I drew very near would other signs of excitement follow. At such times the tongue has scarcely seemed to me the “mute forked flesh” that Ruskin calls it, but a tongue that said something which, although not audible, was clearly understood and easy to translate into words. What it said, or appeared to say, was: “I am not dead nor sleeping, ahd I do not wish to be disturbed, much less trodden on; keep your distance, for your own good as well as for mine.” In other words, the tongue was obtruded and vibrated with a warning purpose. Doubtless every venomous serpent of sluggish habits has more ways than one of making itself conspicuous to and warning off any large, heavy animal that might injure by passing over and treading on it, and I think that in ophidians of this temper the tongue has become, incidentally, a warning organ. Small as it is, its obtrusion is the first of a series of warning motions, and may therefore be considered advantagous to the animal, and, in spite of its smallness, I believe that in very many instances it accomplishes its purposes without the aid of those larger and more violent movements and actions resorted to when the danger becomes pressing.