Binary Adders

A recent idea posted here jocularly suggested that all life evolved from giraffes. Whereas I don't accept this conjecture, it did serve to remind me of a misconception I used to have about snakes. I used to believe that snakes had long necks and long tails, with legless torsos, rather like slim limbless diplodoci. It turns out that snakes are not like that at all but in fact have long torsos with short necks and tails.

The other thing is that I believe that life elsewhere in the Universe will only rarely be anything like vertebrates here, but when it is, the serpentine form is relatively common because there are very many vermiform phyla on Earth and snakes are wormy, a simple shape, which incidentally also means there very probably are tribbles, so we can all be very happy about that.

Now, consider a terrestrial vertebrate. It has a head, neck, torso and tail, and in the case of this place usually also limbs. The bits which can make such an animal like a snake are its neck, torso and tail, and each of these can be short or long.

Therefore I posit the following cosmic snake classification system. There are eight types of snake, one of which isn't really a snake at all, which can be represented by a three- bit binary number. Each bit is set for a long section, cleared for a short one. It goes as follows:

Type zero: this is basically a tribble. It has short to no neck, short to no tail and a small torso. It looks like a zero in shape too.

Type one: Long neck, short body and tail, possibly no tail. This is an animal which is all neck, with a head and a tiny body at the base of the neck.

Type two: Long torso, short neck and tail. This is a snake as we know it, I think, although snakes might have long tails.

Type three: Short tail, long torso and neck.

Type four: short neck and torso, long tail. This animal poos disturbingly close to its mouth. It's also quite tough because it can be injured along most of its length without being killed, and if it's anything like a lizard can also regenerate most of its body (but better than a lizard can).

Type five: long neck and tail, short torso. More or less what I thought a snake was when I was a child. A bit like a Loch Ness Monster or a sauropod but without limbs.

Type six: Short neck, long torso and tail. I think this is probably an eel or a lamprey but I'm not sure. They exist on our planet but are usually aquatic.

Type seven: Long everything. This is like a sinuous long pliosaur or sauropod without limbs. It's the apotheosis of serpents and deeply groovy, but rather vulnerable to strangulation, so maybe it should be aquatic and either breathe through its gills or skin, or maybe cloaca.

There you go. I don't really know why I decided to lay that on you but it pleases me. I may be alone in that.