Trivia Tuesday – Fangs
September 22nd, 2009 |So the more I looked into this particular trivia bit, the more I realized what a fuzzy distinction I was trying to make. But I still thought it was interesting.
Snakes in general are commonly referred to as having fangs, i.e. “the snake sunk his fangs deep into the flesh”, even though they technically do not. In the snake world, fangs only classify hollow, venom injecting teeth. Non-venomous snakes (about 90%) just have teeth. Yes, sharp teeth, but not fangs.
The fuzzy area is how fangs are referred to in the rest of the animal kingdom: spiders have “fangs”, which are more accurately cheliceraeic mouth parts (though accurately following the hollow-with-venom theme). The front canines of carnivores are often called fangs, and it looks like anything with long teeth gets to have fangs.
Essentially, unless you are around a picky herpetologist, I don’t see any harm in saying “ahh don’t let that snake get his fangs in me!”, but now you know the difference.
Sources:
Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe (segment: Blood, Pain, Puke and Poo)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fang
http://www.umass.edu/nrec/snake_pit/pages/myth.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v454/n7204/full/nature07178.html
