What do sidewinders look like

There are dark bands on the tail. The dark blotches, spots, and tail banding are often faded and obscure in the Colorado Desert Sidewinder C.

A dark bar runs from the eye backwards and down. The basal segment of the rattle is black. The keeled dorsal scales are usually in rows at mid-body and along the mid-dorsum is a spiny, heavily-keeled ridge. Like all pit vipers, it has a heat-sensing pit between the eye and nostril. The pupil is vertically elliptical and the anal plate is undivided.

The purpose of the horns over the eyes is not clear. However, they may help protect the eyes as the snake moves through burrows or could act as shades against the intense desert sun. Although unique in our area, other vipers in Latin America and elsewhere in the world have similar structures. The Horned Viper Cerastes cerastes closely resembles the Sidewinder and is an ecological equivalent to it in the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East.

It even sidewinds. It is most widely distributed and common in the Lower Colorado River Subdivision of that desertscrub; however, it enters the Arizona Upland Subdivision in the eastern portions of its range, such as on the western bajada of the Tucson Mountains and in the Waterman Mountains.

In the Circle, this snake occurs primarily in valleys and bajadas; however, it occasionally penetrates into desert mountains along broad, sandy arroyos. It is often abundant where substrates are sandy, but is by no means limited to those areas. Sidewinder records in the Mile Circle are mostly below m. The exception is a collection from m on the southwestern slope of the Pinal Mountains in Gila County UAZ ; identity of the specimen confirmed by the author.

The locality appears to be in semi-desert grassland; however, Sonoran desertscrub is nearby to the south in the Gila River Valley. Elsewhere, the Sidewinder occurs throughout much of western Arizona, southeastern California, southern Nevada, and southern Utah.

In Mexico it occurs in the northeastern portion of the Baja California Peninsula and western Sonora to near Hermosillo. In Arizona, the Sidewinder achieves its greatest densities in the sandy, southwestern desert valleys. In sandy deserts, its sidewinding tracks are often seen at night or in the morning before the wind scrubs them away.

So, in the image gallery, the snake that made those sidewinding tracks was moving from the lower left to the upper right in the picture. Although they are adept at sidewinding, they also employ undulatory and rectilinear locomotion to move forward, as other snakes do. Partially hidden, a cratered Sidewinder is well poised to ambush lizards or rodents that happen by. Although primarily nocturnal, Sidewinders are often found cratered into the sand in the morning. As surface temperatures approach 35 0 C the snakes move into rodent burrows or under other cover.

Females reproduce once every two or three years, giving birth to live offspring in the late summer or early fall. To initiate breeding, a male crawls over the female's back, stroking her with his chin to stimulate arousal. The male wraps his tail around the female's, aligning their sex organs, and the female lifts her tail to facilitate breeding if she is so inclined. Mating generally lasts several hours. The female gives birth to about 15 to 18 offspring in a period of two to three hours.

Babies range from 6 to 8 inches long, on average, and break out of a thin membrane within a few minutes of birth. The babies remain at their birth site for a few days, then go off on their own without subsequent contact with family members. Eric Mohrman has been a freelance writer since , focusing on travel, food and lifestyle stories.

His creative writing is also widely published. According to IUCN, the sidewinder is locally common and widespread throughout its range but no overall population estimate is available. Crotalus cerastes. Population size. Life Span. Photos with Sidewinder. Distribution Sidewinders are found in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. Geography Continents. North America. Mexico, United States. Biome Desert and Xeric Shrublands.

Climate zones Arid. Habits and Lifestyle Sidewinders are terrestrial snakes and rarely climb into vegetation. Group name. Terrestrial, Ambush predator, Precocial, Burrowing. Seasonal behavior. Diet and Nutrition Sidewinders are carnivores. Diet Carnivore. April-May, fall.

Because of their unique form of locomotion, sidewinders are the fastest-moving of all rattlesnakes. The distinctive black-and-white banding at the base of the rattle is used as a lure.

The snakes shuffle their bodies into soft sand, with their heads barely exposed, then twitch the tail to attract prey. Like many other species of pitviper, females of this species will stay with their young for a period of time after they are born. The babies are live-born rather than hatching from eggs. After they shed their skin for the first time, they disperse into the world on their own. Despite being extremely hot in the summer, the southwestern deserts of the U.

This species lives mostly in very sandy areas of the deserts of the southwestern U. Sidewinders occasionally show up in suburban areas of places like Palm Springs, California, or Phoenix, Arizona, where human development has encroached into their native desert habitats.