Have you ever wondered if snakes have a bum? As slithery, legless creatures, it may not seem obvious where snakes keep their derriere. But rest assured, snakes do indeed have a bum!
In this post, we’ll take a lighthearted look at the snakes behind, including whether they poop, fart, and other booty basics. Read on for the naked truth about snake butts!
Do Snakes Have a Bum?
Yes, snakes most certainly have a bum! It’s just located a bit differently than many other animals.
Since snakes lack legs, their business end is found on their belly side towards the tail. The cloaca is the single-opening snake used for excretion, breeding, and egg-laying. This snake bum resides on the underside of their body.
You can identify a snake’s cloaca because it looks like a slit or swollen bulge. The cloaca contains the end of the intestinal tract for excreting waste. It also houses the reproductive organs.
Male snakes have two penises called hemipenes, normally inverted and hidden within the cloaca. For mating, hemipenes become erect and extend outside the cloaca into the female.
Meanwhile, female snakes have ovaries, oviducts for eggs, and sperm storage tubules inside their cloaca. During breeding, the male deposits sperm directly into the female’s cloaca for fertilization.
How Often Do Snakes Poop?
For creatures without legs, snakes can sure make some big poops! Snake droppings can be surprisingly large, given their slender shape.
How often snakes defecate depends primarily on how much and how frequently they eat. Snakes poop less often than many other animals. They can go days or even weeks between bowel movements.
After a big meal, snakes may not poop for up to 10-14 days. Their slow metabolism allows them to extract and process every last nutrient from their food before excreting waste.
Snakes usually only need to eat once every 1-2 weeks (some species even less often). This means they also only need to poop this often. Most snakes will poop about once a week on average.
Some other factors that affect snake pooping frequency include:
- Age – Younger snakes digest food quicker and may poop more often.
- Temperature – Warmer temperatures speed up snakes’ metabolism and digestion.
- Species – Some snake species process food slower than others. Boas and pythons may only poop once a month.
- Size of meal – Bigger meals take longer to digest and delay pooping.
- Health – Sick/stressed snakes may poop less frequently.
So while snakes don’t poop nearly as often as we do, their bums still work hard to push out large, compact faeces when needed! Monitoring your snake’s pooping habits can also help identify any digestion issues.
Do Snakes Fart?
This is one of the most debated questions among snake lovers – do snakes fart??
While snakes certainly have a cloaca that serves as an anus, researchers still aren’t sure if snakes pass gas. There has yet to be solid proof of audible farts from a snake.
Part of the confusion is that snakes can expel air out of their cloaca as a defence mechanism. Snakes can huff and puff, hiss, or discharge foul-smelling musk from their rear when threatened. This is one-way snakes “fart” to scare off predators.
However, this differs from passing intestinal gas, which has yet to be observed in snakes. Most experts believe snakes don’t fart like mammals and birds do.
Here are some reasons why snakes might not pass gas:
- Their digestive process is very efficient at extracting all nutrients and moisture from food, leaving little waste matter to be expelled as gas.
- Snakes may swallow a lot of air when eating, but it’s expelled from the lungs rather than the intestines.
- Since they eat infrequently, gases don’t have time to build up between meals.
- Snake farts may be possible, but they are silent and undetected. Muscles around the cloaca may muffle any noise.
So while the jury is still out, most evidence suggests snakes don’t fart in the traditional sense. Their bums likely don’t expel much in the way of smelly gas. But we can’t rule it out completely!