Hi, I'm Mike the
webmaster here. I guess you have an interest in snakes, or are
just plain curious, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
On this site are
the things that are interesting to us at M'n'M Snakes. there's
a bit about us, a lot about snakes, and snake links, which we
hope will be an expanding list.
Anyway look around and hopefully you'll
find it interesting too
.
"Education is very important. People must realise that snakes
are not out to bite them and prefer to be left alone. They
should also realise that it is not their duty or right to kill
snakes out of hand. Being a snake is not a crime and even venomous
snakes serve a valuable purpose by acting as a natural
control of disease carrying, rice stealing rodents.
The need to understand snakes and the ability to live
alongside them are important factors for anyone living in
snake country. One classic example is that of the Irula of
southern India who used to catch snakes to sell for their
skins. Now they use their expert skills to catch and milk
snakes for venom research, and then release them again. It is
always much harder to promote conservation of an
expressionless 'cold-blooded killer' like a venomous snake
than it is a cuddly, appealing, furry small mammal but many
snakes do need conservation and protection. Although
endangered species are legally protected by CITES and local
laws, that does not stop them being killed or collected. For
some of those species on the brink there are captive breeding
programs and habitat protection projects in place but for many
others we simply lack the background information" Mark O'Shea
Explaining our
slogan.
I
started out creating a database of snake species for my own
use, as it grew and grew I became aware that for a creature
that has been on this planet for around 95 million years, with
so many species, we know so little about snakes. Some species
are known from one or two specimens only, other species we
know nothing, or little about their venom. Even the scientific
community seems to disagree on the genus of others. Hence "So
Many Snakes, So Little Knowledge".
There
are around 3100 known species and no doubt more still to be
identified. Due to there being disagreements and confusion
even in the scientific world, I have only counted the species
recognised by the International Code of Zoological
Nomenclature (ICZN), and that's not counting sub-species.
The Aim of
this web site is to make as much of that knowledge available
as possible by providing links to as many snake related web
sites we can find. I'm not selling anything, nor am
I connected to
any of the sites linked to this site, I just thought it
was about time someone listed snake related sites in one place.
So here they are.
Note: I
have searched for, and found all these websites, at the time
of publishing this all the links were working. As you can
appreciate all this took some time, so I couldn't verify the
accuracy of their contents and therefore take no responibility
for them or any consequences that occur due to what is in the
sites reached from the links on the following
pages.
Mike
The
only difference between people who hate and love reptiles is
that those who hate them never tried to know them. Those
who did become addicts.Stan
Gielewski
email: mike at m-n-m-snakes.com (substituting the standard symbol for at)