Imagine how the world would seem if your sensory input was dominated by the taste of your surroundings!
This beautiful Greenish Rat Snake* tastes and smells its way along the boardwalk - the planks, the metal screw-head, the leaf litter - at the Beidler Forest Audubon Center, South Carolina, USA, which winds through Four Holes Swamp, the largest remaining stand of virgin Bald Cypress and Tupelo Gum swamp forest in the world. The flickering forked tongue picks up molecules from the air and surfaces, but has few taste receptors - instead it inserts them into the Jacobson's organ in the roof of the mouth which essentially smells them.

#Swamps have for centuries been regarded as dangerous places that need to be drained to be of any use, but with the growing realisation of the #ecosystemservices provided by such habitat - including #carbon sequestration and storage, and controlling run-off from heavy rains - the ecology of these peaceful and atmospheric places is now being valued for the benefits it brings to all.
8Taxonomic note: the Greenish Rat Snake is a hybrid found where the ranges of the Black Rat Snake overlaps that of the Yellow Rat Snake, so it is given the scientific name Elaphe obsoleta obsoleta x E. o. quadrivittata.
This is No.34 in the #BrightenYourDay series of videos to expand minds during #Covid19 #lockdown.