I have a garden hose that looks JUST like that; lot friendlier too, I bet.

Actually you'd have more to fear from your garden hose, Susan. These are juvenile Brahminy blind snakes about three inches long that live mostly underground. They're no bigger around than a strand of spaghetti, and eat ant eggs.

I still prefer my garden hose, thank-you.

I'm still waiting for Bendra's comments.

How's the snake book coming alng?

Not bad, Moe. The tiny snakes in the picture are several of the six I found in an empty lot in Miami, about two blocks from a Barnes & Noble store. Yesterday I dropped them all off with a scientist at SUNY's Stony Brook campus who plans to make high-speed videos of their tongue-flicking behavior.

Okay, here's the thing.

You're a male snake out cruising, and you come across the pheromone trail of a female snake who passed that way a few days ago. Do you turn left or right? On that depends the long-term survival of your genes. Fortunately, since your own genes have gotten this far, they have equipped you with the tools to answer the question.

So you flick out your forked tongue, which is equipped to carry pheromone molecules back to a sensing organ in your mouth. The left fork of your tongue picks up 2,412 molecules, let's say. The other fork, a tiny fraction of an inch to the right, picks up 2,414. You turn right. Bliss ensues.