Look at this snake!! (page 3)

TheOldHippie

Looked again. Still doesn't seem like battered to death. But DOES seem like just having swallowed a bottle of beer.

Still go for the fake theory.

Black Sheep

Yeah, right.

Find a snake with a leg and the most intelligent thing you can do is whop it with a shoe.

Pull my other leg.

Witness 007

Genesis: "And JEhovah said to the serpent, cursed you are and on your belly you will crawl....." This snake didn't get that memo!

Humanist

Just showed this to my herpetologist daughter. She says that the snake does look dead and the bruising on the neck is consistent with being crushed by something like a shoe.

If the leg was an atavism it would be lower down the body nearer the vent, which is where the actual vestigial limbs on snakes like pythons are located (the spurs).

The snake does appear to have eaten a lizard which was a little too big and has ruptured the stomach wall and protruded through the ribs. This is quite common, especially in young snakes, which this appears to be. (Another example of a wonderful loving creator, eh?)

bluecanary

If there was a snake that big in my house, I don't care if it could fly, I'd beat the hell out of it.

BluesBrother

The Magazine "Popular Science" said this about it...

"Just because most mutants don't gain special powers doesn't make them any less interesting. Case and point, this snake discovered the other day in Southwest China. Looking at the picture, you should be able to figure out what makes this snake different from most. Namely, the weird clawed limb sticking out of its side.
Dean Qiongxiu, the woman who found the snake, claims she discovered it stuck to the wall of her bedroom. Shocked and scared, Qiongxiu proceeded to beat the snake to death with her shoe, before preserving the beast in a jar of alcohol.
Obviously, this being a natural oddity from China with no independent verification, there's a good chance it's just a skillfull taxidermy hoax. However, nothing in biology prohibits such a mutation.
Some snakes have the remains of hips, and vestigial remnants of limbs, around their cloaca. Additionally, all snake genomes contain the DNA needed to produce a limb, so the mutation could occur with a little tweak of some Hox genes--those that dictate the body's structural plan. Pollution has been shown to cause Hox gene mutations in frogs, and considering the level of pollution in China, it's not a giant intellectual leap to imagine the same thing happening to a snake.
Currently, scientists at West Normal University in Nanchang, China, are performing an autopsy to determine whether or not this represents a novel mutation, or if this strange chimera is simply a fabrication."

Don't tell any dub relatives, though...They will be the first to say "We were right all along" Just look at this detail from a pic of The Garden Of Eden in an old WTS book :

outofthebox

dorayakii,

I didn't know. Very interesting your comment about atavism.

So what kind of atavism will have a 4th generation JW? :-)

ootb

Look at this snake!!