REPTILES 
(Crocodilians, The Tuatara, Lizards, Snakes and Turtles) 
“Reptile” is still a horrid word to many despite the fact that comparatively 
few species are deadly, and that most of these do not attack man unless 
provoked. Long popular association of the word with such adjectives as 
“slimy,” “deadly” and “poisonous” has endowed reptiles with a largely 
undeserved notoriety. 
It may be less dramatic, but much more truthful, to divest them in 
part of their sinister reputation, for few of the five thousand living species 
are cause for human worry. For example, if one were to meet all twenty-five 
living species of crocodilians, most of them would sidle out of the way; 
the encounter with the remaining few might, of course, prove embarrassing. 
Only two of the twenty-five hundred species of lizards are known to be 
poisonous, and these “Gila monsters,” less than two feet long, have great 
difficulty in inflicting fatal injury upon a human. Snakes, of which there 
are approximately twenty-three hundred species, are mostly harmless; 
poison-injecting serpents dangerous to man comprise less than ten per cent 
of the total, and there are probably less than six species of constrictors 
capable of constricting man with their muscular coils. Turtles, including 
the greatly feared snappers, rarely inflict wounds and are about the most 
innocuous members of the reptile class. The single rhynchocephalian, the 
tuatara of New Zealand, molests no one and is amiable enough to share its 
burrow with nesting sea birds. 
It is generally uninformed persons who circulate the fanciful yarns 
about snakes milking cows or rolling downhill in hoop fashion with the 
ends of their tails clutched in their mouths and, finally, swallowing them¬ 
selves whole by working their jaws up from the tail. 
From the viewpoint of man, reptiles play a useful role in maintaining 
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