Do snakes drink water?

There are many things about snakes that make them quite different than most animals you will come across. The lack of eyelids and appendages are two of the most common that jump out at your right away. These are just odd animals in so many ways.



Because of all the other oddities about them, there are those that question almost everything about these reptiles. They wonder how they go about everything including how they take in water. This makes many wonder do snakes drink water? That is an interesting question. The natural answer to this would be yes. All animals need water to be able to survive. In fact, without water nothing could survive. Water is the prime thing that makes sure that plants, fungi, animals, and all other living things are able to survive.

Drinking it directly is not the way that some animals or other organisms consume water however. In a lot of lower life organisms they simply absorb the water through their cell membranes or skin. The water is brought into the body where it is used without being “drank” by them. Then there are organisms that get the water that they drink from the organisms that they consume. They absorb the water that is in the other organism that they have eaten and this supplies them with the water that they need.

This would seem to be a great option for the snake. A lot of times this reptile takes in the whole organism that it intends to consume, so it would seem to make some sense that it would just get water from the prey that it is devouring. This is not the case however. Snakes need to drink water like any other animal. Clearly they cannot hold the water in some kind of container in their hands, since they don’t have hands, and they can’t scoop it into their mouth, because they don’t have hands to scoop with. This means that they have to use other alternatives.

Like most animals, a snake will simply drink water. What it does is position itself in a puddle or near a stream and places its mouth into the water and drink. We see this kind of behavior in many animals, but snakes are different because they do not have appendages. They have a lot of control of their heads and neck area, so they simply put their head in the water and slurp up the water with their tongues. Because of their need to drink this way they are often looking for shallow sources of water. This means that they will frequently find puddles after rain storms to get their water from. They may also come close to a stream or gutter to get the water. Read more: Snake Control, Venomous Snakes of Florida, How to Identify Snakes, How to Kill Snakes.