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Abstract: It is well known that diagram lemmas for abelian groups (and more generally in abelian categories) used in algebraic topology, can be suitably extended to “non-abelian” structures such as groups, rings, loops, etc. Moreover, they are equivalent to properties which arise in the axiomatic study of these structures. For the five lemma this is well known, and in the present paper we establish this for the snake lemma and the lemma, which, when suitably formulated, turn out to be equivalent to each other for all (pointed) algebraic structures, and also in general categories of a special type. In particular, we show that among varieties of universal algebras, they are satisfied precisely in the so-called (pointed) ideal determined varieties. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]