What I’ve here is a eastern diamondback rattlesnake.
This is a very sorry scene to a lot of animals when they try to cross the roads and wind up getting hit by a car and this happens to a lot of snakes.
This snake is not very badly damaged, so I’m going to perform a dissection and see what makes this animals tick.
This is an eastern diamondback which we found laying on the side of a road, got hit by a car and we pursue with the dissection and the skinning of the snake.
We are going to start from the upper neck are, cutting down the centre of the ventral scales.
Cutting through the lower abdominal area...
...right down to the tail and separating the skin to the side.
Here we have the internal organ system of the animal.
Here is the trachea, extending to the lung which is here.
The lung should extend one to two third the length of the body.
This is all fat tissue here.
This are the intestines in this area.
This is the lever right here.
And this is the heart.
All the organs sitting under a thin membrane tissue, which we’re not going to separate.
I’m now separating the skin from the snake’s body.
Here we have the fangs of the rattlesnake.
You notes that there are in fact two fangs. Only one of the fang is functional and the other was ready to be shaded off.
The snake tends to grow new fangs, replacing the old fangs which are no longer functioning.
Just like a shark replaces its teeth, snakes will constantly renew their fangs as well.
And on the other side we also have a double set of fangs.
If you notes a very interesting feature here is this cavity in the upper portion of the skull is where the Jaboson’s organ is located.
This organ will detect and analyze aroma particles, carried into the mouth by the snake’s tong.
Here we have the very powerful muscles surrounding the jaw area with its venom glands.
Underneath this muscles is where the venom glads are located. There is no connecting bone structure between the lower and upper jaw bones,
allowing the snake to extending its mouth and swallowing large prey items.