How can I link unlinked vertices? I am using Blender 2.77. I imported a .3ds of a snake to save time while exploring spline IK. Parenting to an armature fails and I suspect this is because the model's vertices are not all linked. I have attached a screen print. I hover over the verts and hit L and as you can see, not all of the verts are linked. When I select with L it should select all the verts. Is there a way to join them?
here is one way to do it manually
first make sure the two unconnected meshes are close to each other



Select an edge loop from the first and second mesh where they should be connected



use the remove doubles operator and try different values of merge distance, make sure unselected option is unchecked