The scaly skin of a snake is <em>homologous</em> to skin of a lizard.
Explanation:
Homologous means usually arranging the same or allelic genes with a genetic loci in the same order. Also, born or raised in response to the same species of organism.
The term homologous is derived from the Greek 'homos' which means one and 'logos'. So, literally, it means the same relationship. To make this a bit clearer, we can say that this means a similar relative position, structure, function or origin. However, this definition is still somewhat broad and vague. This is because the term 'homologous' is used in biology in many different fashion.
The scaly skin of a snake is homologousto skin of a lizard.
Homologous is a term used to describe a part of two different animals that come from a common ancestor. This makes the part will have a very similar structure. Other similar terms would be analogous where the part of the animals will have similar functions but comes from a different ancestor, thus have a different structure.
The number is different than the number of chromosomes because us humans normally contain 23 pairs of chromosomes which is a total of 46 chromosomes in each cell. A change in the number of chromosomes can cause problems with growth, development, and function of the body systems.
