Snakes are poikilothermic (= have variable body temperatures) like the
amphibians,
Embryo surrounded by an amnion, as
in the birds,
Eggs are laid on land (birds) and no
longer depend on a watery environment;
The mammals take interiorization one
step more, the nest which birds build in the outside world is taken inside and
becomes the uterus.
Calcareous shell. Birds and reptiles
both produce egg shells.
Despite the relationship, birds seem the opposite of snakes in many
respects.
Snakes are out-and-out reptiles. The 4 limbs disappeared/are
legless/progress on the ground and in trees with sinuous twisting movements,
burrow in the sand,
sometimes swim in water. Like to stay in one place, occupying the same
familiar territory for years on end. Essentially, therefore, snakes have
narrowed their habitat
to a fixed point on earth; they have narrowed down their bodies so that they
have become a limbless tube.
In plant terms we might say that snakes have concentrated on the stem
principle.
Snakes are deaf, having no middle ear. (Snake charmers achieve their
ends not through music but because of the movements they make). These animals
therefore lack
the mobile inner part of the ear and the 4 limbs = the outer and the
inner mobility that is part of musicality. Music becomes dance in the movement
of the limbs.
This is probably also the reason why the sinuous twisting movements of
snakes look so unpleasant to us; they lack both music and harmony.
Birds, on the other hand, take the limb principle to extremes, with the
anterior limbs developed into wings to produce the airfoils that permit them to
fly.
Migrating birds circle the whole globe, covering thousands of kilometers
year after year.
Birds on the other hand represent the leaf principle with their wings;
they have expanded into the world around them/made the whole earth their
habitat. Address to our sense of music.
Bird song is something unique in the world of nature.
Rose or lily is the culmination of plant life and comes close to being a
work of art, nature presents the art of music in the song of birds. Some birds
are even able to imitate human speech.
The flight of birds is something sublime; a certain awe is felt as the
eye follows the strange V-shaped form of a flight of cranes in the sky. The
beat of the wings forms
a wave as it passes further back the line and in this one experience the
common breath that guides individual birds the way a conductor does a symphony.
Birds accordingly have a completely separate left and r. heart,
Taking snakes and birds together, it would seem that the snakes forewent
(= verzichten) music entirely in their organization so that the birds might
have it. Surely the price we pay for the
admiration we feel for birds is the repugnance we might experience when
we look at a snake.
Among the Sauropsida, birds have anticipated development in so far as
they are already homeothermic like mammals. Once again they are slightly
overdoing things, however, for they
do not attain to the 'proper level' of 37° C. Compared to human beings
they may be said to have a fever all the time (body temperature 41 - 44° C).
Snakes, on the other hand, have remained poikilothermic/have an
incomplete septum.
All in all, snakes show regression of limbs, narrowing down to a
tubelike body that is all trunk, limitation to a restricted habitat, and
exclusion from the whole world of sound (which
also represents a narrowing down if one compares them to birds).
Vorwort/Suchen Zeichen/Abkürzungen Impressum