Do baby snakes nurse on their mothers?

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asked Jul 2, 2019 in Other-Environment by Grateful11 (620 points)
Do baby snakes nurse on their mothers?

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answered Jul 2, 2019 by Grahlu (51,270 points)
Snakes do not contain any mammary glands which is required for the animal to nurse it's young.

So no baby snakes do not nurse on their mothers because it's impossible for them to do so.

The mom snake actually does not take care of the baby snakes after they are born although they protect the eggs while they're hatching.

Mother snakes do produce some milk though but not through the same way that other animals do.

Instead the mother snake regurgitates the milk from it's mouth and feeds the baby snakes through their mouth from their mouth.

So in a way the mother snake nurses the baby snakes but not in the same way that other animals nurse.

Although there aren't any snakes that actually nurse their young there are snakelike creatures that are called caecilians that do nurse their young.

Caecilians are actually amphibians, so they are more closely related to frogs and toads than to snakes, but unlike frogs and toads, they live underground and have evolved long narrow bodies with no limbs, so they look a lot like snakes:

Those snake like creatures have the ability to nurse their young but snakes do not have any nipples to have the ability to actually nurse their young.

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