Serpent

Snake

Snakes are limbless reptiles of the squamate suborder Serpentes. Closely related to lizards and the tuatara, snakes are ectothermic, amniote, air-breathing vertebrates with an elongated rope-like body covered by overlapping scales, and they move around using undulatory, rectilinear, concertina, sidewinding or slide-pushing locomotion, with some arboreal species even capable of short-ranged gliding flight by flaring out the ribs to flatten and widen the body for aerodynamic lift. Snakes have skulls with significantly fewer sutures and more hypermobile articulations than their lizard relatives, enabling them to greatly widen the mouth and swallow prey much larger than their heads. To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most only have one functional lung. Despite being tetrapods from a cladistic prospective, snakes lack limbs completely, although pythons and boids retain a vestigial pelvic girdle. Some lizards have also independently evolved a snake-like elongated body without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards, who have eyelids, external ears and a fleshy non-forked tongue that snakes lack, although this rule is not universal.

Sea serpent

A sea serpent is a type of sea monster described in various mythologies and religious texts. Famous sea serpents include: the Mesopotamian Tiamat, Ugaritic Yam and Tannin, Judaic Leviathan and Rahab, ancient Greek Cetus, Echidna, Hydra and Scylla, Vedic Vritra and Surasa, and the Norse Jörmungandr, etc.

Serpent (instrument)

The serpent is a low-pitched early wind instrument in the lip-reed family, developed in the Renaissance era. It has a trombone-like mouthpiece, with six tone holes arranged in two groups of three fingered by each hand. It is named for its long, conical bore bent into a snakelike shape, and unlike most brass instruments is made from wood with an outer covering of leather or parchment. A distant ancestor of the tuba, the serpent is related to the cornett and was used for bass parts from the 17th to the early 19th centuries.

Serpent

Proper noun

1. Synonym of Serpens (a constellation).
2. Synonym of Satan or referencing the form he took in the Book of Genesis (a serpent).