Skin surface on the ventral surface of snakes is optimized for legless locomotion in the course of evolution. This frictional system was investigated using microtribological technique to gain a deepened insight in the specialized surface modifications of the snake skin. In our studies, we have shown that the frictional properties of snake skin are highly optimized to generate frictional anisotropy and to reduce the occurrence of stick-slip motion during sliding. Despite this a strong influence of the effective elastic modulus of underlying layers on the frictional properties in general and the anisotropic frictional properties in particular was shown. We assumed, that snakes are able to alter frictional properties of their ventral body surface by the variation of body stiffness and thereby their effective elastic modulus. These results show that the snake skin is a very attractive biological model for optimizing technical surfaces under tribological stress.