Snake discussion......

One of these was sunny himself a foot off the trail where I was hiking in Volusia County. He was definitely cold, and was coiled up in the only sliver of sun to break through the treetops. Didn't even rattle or move when I walked past - must have been too cold.

 

Aye, red racer and black racer, the descriptive word mean is kind. They bite and will not let go. Well, they do let go, but they need to calm down first.
They are great mousers, and rat eaters. I had one get away, my sisters liked to impress their friends and hold my snakes. I imagine they were bit and ran from my room. Dad loved it as he ate the rats and mice that kept getting in the chicken and game bird food. It was still there a decade later.

 

My "Grad Professor" for my MS in Animal Behavior told me ground squirrels actually have a "language" of sorts. They have a different squeak or chip or bark for hawks, crows, dangerous (to them) snakes. Burrowing owl chicks "clatter" like rattlesnakes while in the burrow to fend off predators. For those in Cali, I saw this best illustrated at Col. Ainsworth State Park, which had the densest population I had ever seen!

 

I raised snakes, spiders, reptiles, and mice to feed them when I was a kid. Mom and dad were fine as long as I left the poisonous ones outside.
A couple years ago my daughter, a middle aged woman, and I were desert hiking through brush. That night I awoke because my right lower leg was itching horribly. As I scratched I noticed I had a twig in my leg. I pulled it out, noticed it had a hole down the middle. My sleepy mind figured it was just a dry twig that I collected earlier when we were walking. Taking my shower, when I cleaned the wound, I noticed there were two holes, bout 3/8 inch apart.
I had gathered the tooth of a rattlesnake.

Read this one below folks.
Many times rattle snakes do not inject the poison into what they bite. Their poison is fairly weak, and most survive the bites with little damage.
Some people are very susceptible to the poison and get very ill, or have severe muscle damage. Do not play with snakes that you do not recognize.

Let the snakes live. They eat bugs, and small critters we do not like so much.

We have Loma Linda University Medical Center across the valley from us. One of the best anti-venom hospitals in the USA. Bite victims are flown in, and treated.

Thankfully, although I have an abundance of food allergies, but I am immune to wasps, bees, and possibly rattlesnakes. I will not try to prove it, as I am not that dumb.

 

Gopher snakes shake their tails in the weeds to sound like a rattler.

 

Alot of snakes do that.

 

LLUMC. I've been there a few times, great Care Givers.
Lots of highly trained Doctors of all disciplines come from LLUMS.

 

Beautiful ruber!

 

Wife discovered this gopher snake in the laundry room…..took me two days to get her off the ceiling….lol

 

He just wanted cuddles!

 

I've had California king snakes do that also!

 

Saw a "black phase" (melanistic) one out by Idlewild=BEAUTIFUL mahogany with black diamonds. Tried to pin it and catch it but it escaped into the rocks. My girlfriend jumped on to the same rock where it was sunning itself.

 

That is one reason why bites from baby rattlers are more dangerous. Adults will withhold their venom because it is how they catch their prey. If they inject all their venom, they can't eat for a while. Not all rattlesnake venom is weak. The Mojave rattlesnake (and some hybrids with the southern Pacific rattlesnake in parts of SoCal) have a strongly neurotoxic venom and are likely the most venomous in North America (4x as deadly as an Asian cobra and 16x as times as a coral-drop for drop, their LD50 is about 4 drops per Kg. for humans!). I NEVER enjoyed handling Mojaves. My parents were the same about "hot snakes"; my mom had a fit when they came home early from a weekend in Big Bear and she found a snake sack with a sidewinder on my spare bed! I hid out at a friend's house for a few days. Worse than when they caught me with a girl in there!


My 4 Runner at the CSU Desert Research Center, Zzyzx Rd, Soda Springs, CA. I stopped by to show my wife where I did a field trip while in grad school for my Herpetology class. Each student brought a case of beer we could buy named after the weirdest animal.



A local neighbor up the road on that trip:

 

My cousin teaches emergency medicine and is a pediatrician at Loma Linda. He worked his way through med school at UC Irvine as an LA paramedic (both city and county)

 

Southern Pacific Rattlesnakes (C helleri) are often darkly pigmented, may have been one of those?

 

You mean C. viridus helleri? I learned it as a sub-species in Herp class in grad school. It was wrong habitat, too far east and fairly high elevation. Distinctly mahogany/dark red with black diamonds. I've seen a dozen or so red rattlers out of the over 100 I've handled. Melanism can occur in just about all species and subspecies of rattlesnakes.

 

When the viridis complex was split, helleri was recognized as a subspecies in the oreganus group for a time. C helleri, along with other former ssp. such as cerberus, lutosus, concolor have since been elevated to full species status.

 

There are lumpers and there are splitters. Grinnell once described 81 (sub) species of black bear. USFWS still shows the southern Pacific as a subspecies, as well as the northern Pacific (C.v. oreganus). If full species, the so. Pacific and Mojave should not be able to interbreed.

"By far the most well-known species concept is the biological species concept, which was proposed by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr. The biological species concept states that a species is a group of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups."

For instance, spring peepers and cricket frogs are identical but do not interbreed based on behavioral differences. One calls before spring rains and one calls after.

 

The viridis complex is no longer recognized and hasn't been for some time, only the Prairie Rattlesnake (C v viridis) remains. Even the Hopi Rattlesnake, which was once C viridis nuntius, is now recognized as a dwarfed population of C v viridis.
C helleri and C scutulatus do interbreed, as do many other rattlesnake species. There is a confirmed population of C scutulatus x C viridis in southwest NM. C atrox x C molossus, C adamanteus x C horridus, etc, etc.
I find N central Az, where viridis, lutosus and concolor ranges overlap to be of particular interest. Not far from there lutosus and cerberus mingle as well. Interesting!

 

Since (1) this is getting too obtuse for most of the followers herein and (2) I haven't worked professionally with herps since I retired 4 or 5 years ago, and (3) I worked mostly with salamanders, leopard frogs, and toads before that for over 10 years, I will yield this discussion.

As an aside, you may be interested in the fact we have a confirmed population of the desert grassland whiptail lizard here in eastern Washington. Aspidoscelis uniparens is an all-female "species" of reptiles in North America. It was formerly placed in the genus Cnemidophorus.

 

No worries, it was not my intent to get so far "into the weeds" on the subject. If you're interested, Davis et al. 2016 Deconstructing a Species-Complex is available online and is a great read.
Interesting on the whiptail, is that a range extension?

Getting back on track, here is a Banded Rock Rattlesnake from Se Az.

 

I fed my smoothies today.

 

I got bit too. Thats why i cant have venomous. And they should sell tongs at the pet store.

 

Another healthy EDB', South Florida.

 

Awesome!

 

Was he as big in person as he looks in this photo?

 

Nice snake!

It's not all that big considering they can get up to 8 feet long, you can sorta judge its size by comparing it to the pine needles nearby.