Snake with foot found in China

[Bushknew]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6187320/Snake...


The snake – 16 inches long and the thickness of a little finger – is now being studied at the Life Sciences Department at China's West Normal University in Nanchang.

Snake expert Long Shuai said: "It is truly shocking but we won't know the cause until we've conducted an autopsy."

A more common mutation among snakes is the growth of a second head, which occurs in a similar way to the formation of Siamese twins in humans.

[Sukie]

1. Can you say.....................

Evolution? I don't know though. That is a small snake. It just gets curiouser...

[Codeine]

12. Snakes evolved from lizards.

They used to have legs; some species still have some of the internal skeletal structure for legs.

[YOY]

2. Wonder just how poluted that part of China is...

n.t.

[daninthemoon]

3. That is one creepy picture

[grantcart]

4. Now that is an original design lol

[drm604]

5. Homeobox genes.

I'm not a biologist but this seems like a mutation in a homeobox gene.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeobox

That snake species must still have ancient genes for the formation of a leg and foot, and the homeobox genes that were blocking it must have gotten damaged.

This is just a guess from a non-biologist, but it makes sense to me.

It will be interesting to hear how the creationists attempt to explain this.

[TZ]

13. thats a pretty good guess.

As a biologist I think thats a viable hypothesis. We all have genes encoded with old traits...After all we actually have gills during one stage of development...

[phantom power]

15. Definitely a regulatory gene malfunction. It might not even be a mutation....

it might be a non-genetic environmental trigger of suppressed regulatory pathways. In fact that is probably more likely, given that it isn't symmetric.

[drm604]

16. That makes sense. n/t

[Avalux]

23. Snakes still have the gene for limbs.

Chemicals, radiation...those types of things could 'turn on' the specific gene. I am not sure this would qualify as homeobox...which would usually manifest as legs where antennae should be or double antennae.

Legs on snakes is very odd indeed.

[TZ]

25. not that odd

It didn't take much tinkering in my genetics lab to make a leg grow out of a fruit fly eye. I've always been intrigued by how small effects in the genotype can make HUGE differences in the phenotype

[elehhhhna]

24. simply another sign of armaggeddon

lol

[InternalDialogue]

6. It evolved the hand just to punch other snakes with.

[prole_for_peace]

7. I welcome our snake overlords. n/t

[fob]

8. The misssssssssing link!

or

The hissssssssing link, take your pick.

[TheCowsCameHome]

9. Awww, how cute.

Can we keep him, daddy?

[Desertrose]

10. What is the sound of one hand clapping....

or he's just gonna go round in a circle. Wouldn't two hands or feet have been a greater evolutionary leap?

Kidding....



Very strange!!

[MichaelHarris]

11. Jesus

isn't going to like this at all.

[drm604]

14. I just now actually read the article.

Dean Qiongxiu, 66, said she discovered the reptile clinging to the wall of her bedroom with its talons in the middle of the night.

"I woke up and heard a strange scratching sound. I turned on the light and saw this monster working its way along the wall using his claw," said Mrs Duan of Suining, southwest China.

Before reading that I assumed that it was a useless growth (an actual foot, obviously, but unusable), but if this woman's story is correct then apparently the snake had actual use of the appendage. If so then the connections to the central nervous system and brain structures needed to control it existed along with the leg. How freaky is that?

This has the potential to contribute to both our knowledge of evolution and the development of individuals. It's a shame she killed it, but if I had found that thing crawling up my wall in the middle of the night I may have killed it also.

[phantom power]

17. This is a cool demonstration of at least two things...

1) loss of snake limbs occurred via suppression of the "leg-generating" development pathways.

2) in the big picture, it must have been pretty recent, because the pathways still work if the suppression fails.

[semillama]

18. Can we be certain that the foot actually belongs to the snake?

It doesn't seem to be oriented in the correct direction in relation to the front of the snake. Also, you can see that the body of the snake is bulged out just in front and back of the limb - is it possible that the snake just swallowed a large lizard, and in the course of getting the lizard down, one of the limbs burst through the body cavity? It's been known to happen.

[drm604]

19. The coloration matches that of the snake.

Also, the woman claims that the snake was using the limb to climb along the wall.

In any case, wouldn't the scenario you describe kill the snake pretty quickly?

[semillama]

22. Possibly, but the option has to be taken into account

Occam's razor and all that.

[Orsino]

20. You're no fun.

But seriously, some recent theory says we can build a dinosaur mainly by flipping some genetic switches in chickens. I can well believe that a mutant snake can grow a foot.

I imagine that such a foot would resemble a lizard's.

[Ter]

21. Mrs Duan said she was so scared she grabbed a shoe and beat the snake to death...

Thank you for destroying something truly unique.

[Vidar]

26. What foot? It's obviously an image of the Virgin Mary that the snake swallowed.

[sspeilbergfan90]

27. Just creepy