Snake an aspid is a myth or a reality?

An aspid is what or who? According to the biblical legend, this is a terrible and poisonous serpent with horns, with white and black spots of sandy color, scattered on the skin. He appeared in the imagination of people as a winged dragon with two paws and a bird's beak. On medieval tablets it was said that Aspid lives in the mountains, that he never sets himself on the ground, preferring only huge stones. According to legend, this monster supposedly devastated the neighborhood, destroying livestock and people. And nothing can kill him, except that burn in a blue flame. So, an aspid is who really is: a biblical serf-tyrant or a real reptile living on our planet? We learn!

Who is an aspid?

The word "aspid" is not currently a proper name, and therefore in the middle or the end of the sentence is written with a lowercase letter, not a capital letter. Aspids are a vast family of poisonous snakes, which includes more than 347 different species. All of them are united in 61 genus, or superfamily. In Greek, an aspid is a "poisonous snake". The modern classification includes in this family a whole group of sea snakes that previously belonged to a completely different family.

The brightest representatives of this group of reptiles are:

• Water cobra,
• Shield cobra,
• Mamba,
• Krauty,
• Decorated with aspidy,
• Collar cobra,
• African variegated aspids,
• Royal cobras ,
• Wood cobra,
• Denison,
• False asps,
• Deadly snakes,
• Tiger snakes,
• Solomon asps, etc.

Family aspida. Dimensions and colors

Aspid - this is an amazing snake! The body length of most representatives of this family ranges from 40 centimeters to 4 meters. For example, the Arizona aspid is stretched to 60 centimeters, and the so-called black mamba - up to 3.8 meters. The body color of these snakes can be different, but often it is of two types. For example, woody and land types of aspids (cobra, mamba, viper) are painted predominantly in monochromatic gray, brown, green or sandy colors.

But there are also species that have vague and even vague tones. Thus, small and burrowing species of poisonous snakes can be painted in coral color or generally have a bright contrast pattern consisting of red, yellow, black and alternating rings. By the way, such coloring directly indicates the virulence of its owner. Many species of tree frogs, by analogy painted in orange-green color, pose a serious danger to predatory animals.

The structure of the poisonous tooth of aspidum

As already mentioned above, an aspid is a snake with a deadly poison. All species of this family are poisonous without exception. The lethal substance is in their teeth. Let's find out what the legendary teeth of poisonous snakes look like. To begin with, there are two of them: the pair of teeth are located at the anterior end of the maxillary bone, which has a markedly shortened shape.

Both teeth are much larger than all the others and have a peculiar form: they are bent back and are provided with a conducing channel, from which a deadly poison is injected into the blood of the victim. It should be noted that the poisonous teeth of all representatives of the family of aspidids are quite primitive, since they are located in the oral cavity motionless.

The most primitive species of these snakes have in the mouth from 8 to 15 small teeth located on the upper jaw, but most of their congeners still have 3-5 teeth. It is noteworthy that in such aggressive aspids, as African mambas, all upper small teeth (except for two poisonous ones) have already independently disappeared in the course of evolution.

Aspids in mythology

As already mentioned above, the aspid is not only the representative of the current family of venomous snakes, but also the mythological monster described in the Biblical legends. In this case, the word "Aspid" will be used as a proper name, and therefore written with a capital letter. Let's remind: according to the legend, this serpent devastates the neighborhood, taking with itself cattle and people. Kill it can only be fire, because the Aspid is not an unburned creature.

According to the legend, Aspid is able to cling to the ground with one ear, and stop the other with his tail. Why does he need it? The fact is that the mythological Aspid is the same snake (or dragon) as the current reptiles, so it is easy to introduce it into trance by means of various spells. In order not to listen to spellcasters, he also plugs his ears. In Russian folk folklore the serpent of Aspid is compared with the Snake Gorynych and with the terrible Basilisk. Some folklorists still identify this character with a two-meter Egyptian cobra, to which Queen Cleopatra poisoned herself.