By this time, hopefully everyone is up on the fact that certain species of snakes, do have spurs, or tiny remnant femurs.
Already the following information is being used by Atheist hatemongers to say: "Genesis has failed".
Atheists have latched on to this poor cursed creature with one remnant hind limb, as if it were "walking". Far from it, and how geneticists have established the snake will NEVER walk again. Atheists are obviously rather desperate for an argument. The picture says _everything_ anyone need know. When God "curses" -- don't underestimate the implications. God meant exactly what's written in the black and white, literal text.
To address the scripture,
Genesis 3:14-15 "And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
Explaining this: The sheer fact that its on the ground, it's simply.... going to get dirt in its mouth. It's inevitable. Definately a type of curse, even if the earthworm and certain forms of bacteria, would disagree. The Hebrew may be stretched out of context by some, but that's the plain meaning of the text. No elaborate explanation is necessary. It's common sense...
Meanwhile, snakes have a long line of evolutionary history behind them, just as humans themselves on occasion grow tails, which is vestigial (many humans have the same genes, laying dormant and on occasion those are triggered and a vestigial tail is fully formed and functional), or junk dna leading to the growth of a sixth digit in some species... which has been going on for around 350 Million years, this, along with vestigial hind-limbs (now flipper) in Cetaceans, and even in lab studies, to this day, the vestigial limbs are seen forming, and are reasorbed, let's throw in leg loss of snakes among those examples:
Foremost, let it be noted, snakes don't fossilize well, so the fossil record is scant and far from complete. Scientists have two theories for origins of snakes. One involves terrestrial lizards, and the other involves aquatic mesosaurs. But more importantly, according to researchers, snakes may have followed a more peculiar evolutionary path:
"Argument About Snake Evolution Rekindled by Fossil
The snake fossil, found more than 20 years ago in a limestone quarry near Jerusalem, represents a new species, according to researchers writing in the current issue of the journal Science. "Haasiophis terrasanctus" -- named after Hebrew University paleontologist George Haas who bought the fossil from a West Bank quarry -- was about three feet long (0.9 meters) and lived in the shallow waters of a Cretaceous sea that covered part of the Middle East during the days of the dinosaurs. It is the second limbed snake to come from Ein Yabrud, a 95 million-year-old bed of sedimentary rock that also yielded "Pachyrachis problematicus," another important fossil with clues to the origins of snakes. Scientists believe that modern snakes are descended from lizards and that they lost their limbs over time. Remnants of these limbs can still be found in the anatomy of boa constrictors and pythons, just as the remnants of tails can be found in human anatomy. But a description of Haasiophis by Olivier Rieppel of the Field Museum in Chicago, Eitan Tchernov of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and other colleagues writing in the journal Science has researchers once again puzzling whether snakes evolved from sea-going lizards, or from lizards which lived in seashore burrows. "That question has been around for a long time," Rieppel said in a telephone interview. In the 1970s, when Haas first described Pachyrachis, he thought that the well-developed hind limbs and advanced skull characteristics meant that the fossils weren't from snakes at all. Instead he thought they were reptiles related to a species of huge ocean-going Cretaceous lizards called mosasaurs.
"And so we are back to not knowing what kind of an origin snakes had," Rieppel said. Dr. Harry Greene, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University, said the most intriguing aspect about the West Bank fossils is they may show that certain "atavistic" traits can re-evolve if the right genes are triggered. The West Bank fossils may be snakes whose limbs re-evolved, making them "real snakes, just extinct real snakes" with legs, Greene said. Greene postulates that if animals like the West Bank fossils could re-evolve limbs, then other animals that have certain genes they never lost but whose "triggers" are dormant could re-evolve those traits. Maybe humans will end up with tails again.
But... humans do end up with tails sometimes.
Dolphins do sometimes sprout vestigial remnants of their hind-legs.
Animals still go on growing a sixth toe, sometimes.
The difference here is,
Scientists say, "Greene postulates that if animals like the West Bank fossils could re-evolve limbs, then other animals that have certain genes they never lost but whose "triggers" are dormant could re-evolve those traits."
Like other vestigial traits in animals which are retained for millions of years in the form of "Junk DNA," snakes could've made a turn around and evolved legs again, but... the body plan was changed. Even though early snake fossils might have had no forelimbs, does not mean they could not have re-evolved them _IF_ they had the dormant genes to do so... at some point between their earliest origins, and now, the ability to re-evolve fore-limbs disappeared, radically altered. Snakes will go on their belly the rest of their days.
Just as snakes lost their nictitating membrane (the protective eyelid shared by all aquatic creatures. A thin, transparent lens that allows the creature to see under water, and cleaning the eye of irritants. Frogs, Birds, Sea Cows, etc share this trait.) The sea snake returned to the water, and compensated for the loss with a "modified scale". It no longer posesses the traditional nictitating membrane, like other reptilian relatives, crocodiles and alligators, etc.
The point is, genes lay dormant and allow for traits to potentially re-evolve. In this case, snakes may have had a history of losing legs, re-evolving legs, and losing them again. But there's a difference between carrying junk dna vs. a species' genes altered, where an organism can never again grow forelimbs.
Paraphrasing a Herp Expert (Lenny Flank):
From genetic analysis, we know why snakes don't have vestigial fore-limbs.
There was a change in one of the HOX genes that shifted the body plan forward. Snakes have no neck vertebrae --- they are all thoracic and abdominal. Genetically, fore-limbs form where the cervical vertebrae begin. Snakes can't grow front limbs. The vestigial rear limbs appear where the abdominal vertebrae meet the tail. Even though a snake looks like it is all neck or all tail, in reality, it is all body."
Another source:
"...One of the most radical alterations of the vertebrate body plan is seen in the snakes. Snakes evolved from lizards, and they appear to have lost their legs in a two-step process. Both paleontological and embryological evidence supports the view that snakes first lost their forelimbs and later lost their hindlimbs (Caldwell and Lee 1997; Graham and McGonnell 1999). Fossil snakes with hindlimbs, but no forelimbs, have been found. Moreover, while the most derived snakes (such as vipers) are completely limbless, more primitive snakes (such as boas and pythons) have pelvic girdles and rudimentary femurs.
The missing forelimbs can be explained by the Hox expression pattern in the anterior portion of the snake. In most vertebrates, the forelimb forms just anterior to the most anterior expression domain of Hoxc-6 (Gaunt 1994; Burke et al. 1995). Caudal to that point, Hoxc-6, in combination with Hoxc-8, helps specify vertebrae to be thoracic. During early python development, Hoxc-6 is not expressed in the absence of Hoxc-8, so the forelimbs do not form. Rather, the combination of Hoxc-6 and Hoxc-8 is expressed for most of the length of the organism, telling the vertebrae to form ribs throughout most of the body (Figure 22.9; Cohn and Tickle 1999)."
~ Hox Genes: Descent with Modification
~ http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bookshelf/br.fcgi?book=dbio&part=A5434
I'm not a geneticist, but I feel its a safe wager, that, while humans may continue to grow a rare vestigial tail, and dolphins may turn up occasionally with vestigial hind-limbs... though a couple snake species, may even have traces of hind-limbs left to it, it _will never grow forelimbs_ again, ever. At some time during their evolutionary history, the genetic blueprint for snakes was PERMANENTLY, and RADICALLY modified. Therefore, on its belly it will go all the days of its life.
AN ATHEIST WRITES: "Would it seem that the bible has been proved correct....Genesis making his appearance some 6 thousand years ago. We won't mention the fact that snakes don't eat dust."
and Atheist readers chimed in behind the author,
ha ha ha, you are just so brilliant... yes, rolling in laughter... snakes don't eat dust.
Sure, of course! just like every snake I've met is the pickiest eater, with the most proper table manners. It never gets dirt in its mouth while rolling around on the ground squeezing its victims to death, and swallowing them whole, along with the bloody mud...
From Photos of Tommy's Tours and Safaris, Swakopmund
Oh no, Snakes would _NEVER_ eat dirt. The Atheists say so, that's how we know its an absolute fact, and Atheists always have "absolute truths," therefore, can never be wrong. Can they?
THEY WOULD NEVER EAT DIRT ESPECIALLY WHEN THEIR PREY IS COVERED IN IT... NEVER... but Atheists said so, therefore, it's the gospel truth.
To Be Constricted by a Python
A python's bite isn't venomous, but they can kill humans by asphyxiation
Tom Kessenich, 47, herpetologist
"...For a while I kept a ten-foot amethystine python in a cage in my house. He was as big around as three or four garden hoses. One day, I stuck my hand into his cage to retrieve a rat he'd dropped, and, seeing movement near his prey, he nailed my forearm...He dug in and I started bleeding. Was it painful? Well, he has about eighty needlelike teeth, and he left a U shape on my arm. So I'd say yes... It's just like an octopus tentacle: It finds a way to get around you. A python's bite isn't venomous, but they can kill humans by asphyxiation...he'd started to coil around the back of my neck. In three to five seconds, he wrapped around my upper torso and neck. He was trying to get as many coils around me as he could. Once they get those coils around, it's just like a compactor; they just pull it tighter. I could still breathe, but it was hard. The pressure was unbelievable...I've got blood running down my arm, so it's a mess. With constrictors, you have to push their heads forward to pull them off because their teeth are curved inward. I reached down behind the head and pushed in and up with my thumb. Fortunately, he released and I was able to work the coils off me. Unfortunately, he also got really stressed and defecated all over my bathroom.
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