Matches in DBpedia 2014 for { ?s ?p Attenborough confesses that the "unblinking, vague gaze" of a snake still unsettles him, even after years of watching and filming the animals. He describes the unique features of a snake's eye, and how they have led scientists to theorise that the family has evolved from an ancestor that had a subterranean lifestyle. He describes some features of other creatures that live underground, including caecilians, amphibians which have lost all their limbs and their eyes. Moles, by contrast, have adopted a subterranean lifestyle only recently, and have so far retained these features. After the extinction of the dinosaurs, it is believed that snakes emerged to hunt small rodent-like mammals, and their eyes developed along a different evolutionary path to those of other animals. Their ears are connected to their jaws and they can smell using their forked tongues, just as monitor lizards do. The most advanced snakes, the pit vipers, have additional sense organs beneath their eyes which detect changes in temperature. This enables them to strike precisely at their warm-blooded prey, even in darkness.. }
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- David_Attenborough's_Life_Stories shortsummary "Attenborough confesses that the "unblinking, vague gaze" of a snake still unsettles him, even after years of watching and filming the animals. He describes the unique features of a snake's eye, and how they have led scientists to theorise that the family has evolved from an ancestor that had a subterranean lifestyle. He describes some features of other creatures that live underground, including caecilians, amphibians which have lost all their limbs and their eyes. Moles, by contrast, have adopted a subterranean lifestyle only recently, and have so far retained these features. After the extinction of the dinosaurs, it is believed that snakes emerged to hunt small rodent-like mammals, and their eyes developed along a different evolutionary path to those of other animals. Their ears are connected to their jaws and they can smell using their forked tongues, just as monitor lizards do. The most advanced snakes, the pit vipers, have additional sense organs beneath their eyes which detect changes in temperature. This enables them to strike precisely at their warm-blooded prey, even in darkness.".