After the dinosaurs, Earth became an all-you-can-eat buffet for snakes

When it comes to snakes, the modern world offers an embarrassment of riches. There are almost 4,000 different snake species alive today, placing the group not far behind mammals in terms of diversity. The snakes are also varied in the types of food they prefer to consume: Some feast only on earthworms, while others can swallow an entire deer. 

“T​​hey just have an astounding variety of diets,” says Michael Grundler, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He and his colleague Daniel Rabosky, of the…