- Snakes crawl.
According to Longman and Collins dictionary crawl means:
to move slowly, either by dragging the body along the ground or on the hands and knees
so in my point of view it's OK to say snakes crawl, but in one of the previous questions which was posted here, A comparison between "Creep", "Crawl" and "slither", it was said that it sounds unnatural if we use the verb crawl for snakes and slither can be used alternatively.
I was wondering whether this usage of crawl is really unnatural among both British people and Americans because while I was searching I've just come across two songs Snakes Crawl by Bush Tetras and Snakes Crawl at Night by Charley Pride which led me in to confusion.
Best Answer
I disagree with the poster's statement that "crawl sounds very strange to the native speaker." It's the term I'd be most likely to use, unless I wanted a bit of dramatic effect. In that case I'd use "slither."
Here's an ngram comparison of all three.
As you can see, "the snake crept" is the most common in the 19th century, "the snake crawled" is the most common from the early 20th century until about 1980, and "the snake slithered" is now about twice as common as "the snake crawled."