The mental scale, or mental, in snakes and other scaled reptiles refers to the median plate on the tip of the lower jaw. It is a triangular scale that corresponds to the rostral of the upper jaw. The reference to the term 'mental' comes from the mental nerve which addresses the chin and lower jaw in animals. In snakes, the shape and size of this scale is sometimes one of the characteristics used to differentiate species from one another.
Read more about Mental Scale: Related Scales
Famous quotes containing the words mental and/or scale:
“Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)