Quote Originally Posted by GarterGeek View Post
So, do the scales cover the skin or are they protrusions of the skin? If a scale fell off, what be underneath it - skin or muscle tissue?
I tried to find something with good pictures online, because I thought that might help, but I haven't been able to. Reptile scales are direct protrusions of the skin - the epidermis, to be specific. They are NOT like hairs, which periodically fall out and re-grow. Have you ever had a little tag of dead skin next to your fingernail, and you pull on it, and everything is fine until you start to pull on the deeper living skin layer where it's attached and suddenly it hurts like all get-out? That's what a snake scale is like. The dead protruding part is connected to the living epidermis and dermis underneath, and that's what would be exposed if you removed a scale completely. It's still skin (not muscle tissue), but deeper layers of the skin that are not supposed to be exposed to the outside.

Am I correct in thinking that the purpose of scales is to act as an "armor"?
Armor, a barrier against drying out, both traction *and* reduced friction for locomotion...

Is it possible that snake skin absorbs stuff more readily than human skin?
Keep in mind that your skin "absorbs" dirt too (ever worked on an engine and been embarrassed to go to a nice restaurant three days later because your hands were still dirty?). It's just that you shed your dead skin cells individually all the time, instead of saving them all up and peeling a whole layer off at once, so the change is less drastic. All in all snake skin probably absorbs most stuff *less* well than human skin, because the thick keratin layer of the scale is less permeable than our wimpy thin keratin.

I should have made a point about the "absorbing UV" thing earlier, but didn't catch it. When a snake is basking, what it's trying to absorb is not UV light but infrared light - heat waves! Like... moving closer to the campfire as the night gets chilly. UV rays are just as harmful to snake skin as to our skin - it's high-energy radiation that can get into cells and mess with DNA. Mess up the wrong bit of DNA and the cell goes crazy and becomes cancerous. It's true that dark pigments absorb more heat, and I honestly don't know if dark snakes are more efficient baskers than light ones. But really we have melanin as protection against UV radiation - because of its chemical structure it can absorb the high-energy ray and kind of dissipate it in a safe way. (The darkest-skinned people are from the places with the strongest sunlight, not the coldest temperatures!)

I hope I'm not bothering you with my questions.
Not at all! I like teaching biology, because people get such a kick out of learning how bodies work. Plus I figure more knowledge and less misinformation can only ever be good for the world.