Snake Lungs - What's the Difference Between the Heart and the Heart?

This is different to mammals like ourselves, which have a four chambered heart. The chambers of the heart in the python are a left and right atria and a single ventricle that pumps blood back to the body or to the lungs. In many snakes, one of the lungs is massively reduced to the point of being non existent. This allows more blood volume to be available for removing waste metabylites from the tissues around the snake's body. It also saves the energy that the snake would waste in pumping the blood back to its lungs.