The snail lemma and the long homology sequence

Abstract: In the first part of the paper, we establish an homotopical version of the snail lemma (which is a generalization of the classical snake lemma). In the second part, we introduce the category $\mathbf{Seq}(\mathcal A)$ of sequentiable families of arrows in a category $\mathcal A$ and we compare it with the category of chain complexes in $\mathcal A.$ We apply the homotopy snail lemma to a morphism in $\mathbf{Seq}(\mathcal A)$ obtaining first a six-term exact sequence in $\mathbf{Seq}(\mathcal A)$ and then, unrolling the sequence in $\mathbf{Seq}(\mathcal A),$ a long exact sequence in $\mathcal A.$ When $\mathcal A$ is abelian, this sequence subsumes the usual long homology sequence obtained from an extension of chain complexes.