Snake Fangs? Blame Sonic Hedgehog, says this Freek!

[Gagglegnash]

Hi

Very interesting article in Science News this week: "How the Snake Got its Fangs."

It turns out that difficulty of placing snakes in the evolutionary tree, with fang-placement seemingly scattered about, has been addressed by a researcher named Freek Vonk.

Dagger-sharp frontal fangs allow cobras and vipers to prey on feisty mammals such as the large desert rat. Garter snakes, corn snakes and others that hunt less volatile creatures do just fine with fangs in the back of their mouth. What confused biologists, however, was learning that the front-fanged snakes don’t fall into a neat group. In the snake tree of life, rear-fanged snakes are scattered on evolutionary branches in between the cobras and the more recently evolved vipers, which indicates that fangs evolved at least a couple of times on separate branches leading to front-fanged snakes.

Ok - I've all but given away the game, here. If you want to learn why Sonic Hedgehog is the answer, you'll have to read the article.

Score one for the evolutionists!