The following is a brief of the full story. For the full story, see Friday's print edition of the Boonville Daily News.
Preschool students at Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic School have been learning about snakes this week – and they’ve discovered that snakes aren’t as scary as they have been made out to be.
Becky Matney of the Missouri Department of Conservation gave a presentation about the critters to the preschoolers Friday morning.
Matney first provided information to the students by using a fake snake – and then she brought out the real reptiles.
She told the students snakes like to slither on the ground because they have no arms or legs. This is one of the reasons that people are afraid of the creatures.
Matney then used another fake snake with a skin around it to show how they shed. The snakes have scales that help protect them from prey. When they shed their scales, new shiny scales replace the old ones.
She then presented scales that had been shed by a snake and let the students touch them. “Scales that have been shed feel like dry leaves,” Matney said.
The students also talked about how snakes smell with their tongues, making them much different from other animals, and uniquely so.
Another unique quality about the reptiles is that they have no eyelids, therefore, they cannot blink. They sleep with their eyes open.
