Can you imagine a snake wearing spectacles? And, if a snake did wear spectacles, how on earth would it keep them properly pushed up on its nose? Yet snakes do wear spectacles. Every single snake that has ever lived has worn them, and every snake in the foreseeable future will wear them.
Obviously, we are not talking about spectacles manufactured out of glass or plastic, with frames and ear-pieces, such as humans often wear. Instead, the snake’s spectacles are transparent scales which are part of their skin. They really are called “spectacles” or “lenses.” These scales fit so snugly over their eyes that normally an observer cannot see them at all.
When the snake is ready to shed its skin, the old skin – including the spectacle-scales over the eyes – separates from the new skin formed beneath, and an oily liquid fills the space between. The snake’s eyes at this time appear to have a blueish-white film over them, and the snake is blind.
The tough transparent covers over its eyes are only of several striking ways in which snakes are uniquely equipped to live with their physical limitations. Did you know, for example, that snakes hear through their jaw-bones, and through their lungs? They have no external ears, not even openings in the skin leading to their inner ears. Instead, ground vibrations are transmitted through the jaw-bone to other bones on the skull, and thence to the inner ears. They can detect even the pitter-patter of tiny mouse feet in this way.
But snakes can also hear sounds that move only through the air, by means of a special nerve in their lung chambers. Tests have shown that snakes can hear people speaking softly as far as ten feet away.
Of course, a snake’s most obvious adaptation to its circumstances answers the question of how it gets about. Having no legs, it can only slither. But how does it slither? Chiefly by advancing several of its approximately 200 pairs of ribs and their attached abdominal plates at the same time. As these plates gain a purchase on the ground, the next section of ribs and plates advances in turn and anchors, allowing the leading section to move on again. This advance-and-hold sequence is repeated down the full length of the snake. If we could see the snake’s bare skeleton as it moved forward we might be reminded of the rows of of oars in ancient ships, as they moved back and forth in concerted motion. Cumbersome as this motion seems, some snakes can cover the ground quite rapidly, and a few can even climb trees.
Since snakes cannot hold their food up to their mouths, as we hold a sandwich, the only way they can eat is by “wolfing” their food in one piece. To make this possible, their teeth are curved to the rear, and their jaws are segmented so that they can be pushed forward over the prey independently.
If you were to watch closely as a snake swallows a rat, you would see one side of the lower jaw inch forward over the rat’s body and establish a anchor point. Then the other side of the lower jaw would advance on its side, followed in sequence by the upper jaw. In this way the jaws seem to “walk” over the snake’s meal.
Sometimes the meal is considerably bigger than the normal opening of the snake’s jaws, but this is not a problem. The snake’s lower jaw is designed to unhinge from the upper, and also to separate in the middle, where it is connected by an elastic muscle.
Snakes breathe through their mouths, and this could be a big problem while they are laboriously swallowing their meals, were it not for still another special design feature: Whenever the snake’s throat is stuffed with the body of its victim, the opening of the snake’s windpipe automatically moves forward from its normal position in the throat to the front of the lower jaw. This allows the snake to continue to breathe normally.
Someone should get a lot of credit for all these really ingenious arrangements which make it possible for snakes to thrive despite their obvious handicaps. But to whom should the credit go?
The theory of Evolution teaches that snakes themselves are responsible, just as every creature got where it is by its own strength or quickness, or wit or blind luck. According to this theory, life began by accident, and has continued through survival of the fittest.
But let us test this theory by the snake. Snakes wear spectacles made of transparent scales. How did they evolve? Remember that evolution is supposed to bring change by exceedingly tiny increments, over a vast period of time. Since snakes go on their bellies, their eyes obviously need protection, but they could not wait tens of thousands of years for it. It would be particularly hard for them to wait for the covering scales to become transparent, since they would be totally blind in the meantime!
The same argument holds true for the other adaptations. No snake could wait very long for substitutes to develop for his ears – his dinner depends too heavily on them! Nor could any amount of trial-and-error progress account for jaws which unhinge to admit large prey. (Can you imagine the sorry state of a patriarchal snake which got its jaw unhinged and couldn’t get it back into place?)
Enough. Even if one does not like snakes, it should be apparent that great wisdom went into their creation. They, like all the world, give witness to the vast Intelligence responsible for the universe. This Intelligence is God. As His book, the Bible, declares: “Yahweh [that is, God], how many are your works! In wisdom have you made them all. The earth is full of your riches.” (Psalm 104:24)
How revealing of God’s nature it is to realize that He has amply provided for the needs of snakes, even though snakes have from the very first been symbols of Satan – that great enemy of man, and pretender to the throne of God, Himself (See Revelation 12:3-9 and Isaiah 14:12-15). God provides even for those who hate Him, as Jesus Christ declared in Matthew 5:45: “…For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”
Does it make no difference, then, whether we know God and serve Him? Indeed it does! We are not dumb brutes of the animal kingdom, but humans made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26) – made for close fellowship with God, as our first parents fellowshipped with Him (Genesis 3:8-9). The Bible tells us how we can become children of God and walk in love with Him, through His Son, Jesus Christ. But the Bible also identifies those who fail to come to God through Jesus as “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3) – that is, God’s wrath, which will be meted out at the consummation of time. God allows His enemies to live and even prosper for the present, but a day of reckoning is coming. Let us by all means seek His face, while it is turned toward us with love and invitation!
(All Scripture is quoted from the World English Bible translation.)