Photograph by Alexandre Turmaine, a MSc student at McGill University

Here is a humble Common Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) taking a crepuscular crawl in the late  afternoon at the Oka National Parc in late April. This photo caught the instance when the individual pulled out its forked tongue to “taste me” so to speak. The iconic flicking of a snake’s tongue is their  way to sense their environment, snakes detect odor particles present in  the air by bringing them onto specialized receptors localized in the roof of their mouth. Just like mammalian olfaction,  in which we bring smells into our nose for identification by inhaling, snakes do so by extending their  tongue out during which the odor particles bind to it and then bringing it back in to  their sensory organ which interprets what it is detecting. 

About the Photographer: My name is Alexandre Turmaine, following the completion of my undergraduate studies in  environmental biology, I am starting a masters in the Renewable Resources department at McGill  University studying the foraging success of a cliff nesting seabird (Thick-Billed Murre) using GPS accelerometers.