50 Fun Facts About Rattlesnake

Which of these snakes is a pit viper, like the rattlesnakes?

Copperhead. Pit vipers are named for the heat-sensing pit between each eye and nostril, which lets them strike warm-blooded prey accurately even in complete darkness.

Rattlesnakes are native to which part of the world?

The Americas only. They range from southern Canada to central Argentina, and a 1775 essay credited to Benjamin Franklin argued that living nowhere else made the rattlesnake a fitting emblem of America.

Where do most rattlesnake species live?

Mexico and the Southwest. Most rattlesnakes favour dry, rocky country, which offers shelter, basking spots and plenty of rodents, and only a few species live in the eastern US or South America.

Which is the largest rattlesnake species?

Eastern diamondback. North America's heaviest venomous snake can reach about eight feet, and it often shelters in burrows dug by gopher tortoises.

The rattlesnake genus name Crotalus comes from the Greek word for which instrument?

Castanet. The Greek krotalon was a clapper or rattle shaken in religious rites, a fitting namesake for a snake known for the buzz it makes.

Which US state has the most types of rattlesnake, with 13?

Arizona. Its 13 species include the small ridge-nosed rattlesnake, which the state adopted as its official reptile in 1986.

Which bird of the cuckoo family is known to prey on young rattlesnakes?

Greater roadrunner. This long-legged ground cuckoo hunts lizards, scorpions and snakes on foot, and now and then it takes a young rattlesnake.

Rattlesnakes swallow their prey which way round?

Head first. Backward-pointing teeth grip the meal, and going in head first lets legs or wings tuck in flat so it slides down at its narrowest.

In deserts, rattlesnakes have been seen coiling and flattening their bodies to do what?

Collect rainwater. They sip the drops straight off their own scales, and snakes huddled together have been filmed drinking from one another's backs.

Which snake shrugs off rattlesnake venom and eats rattlesnakes as part of its normal diet?

Common kingsnake. A nonvenomous constrictor, it kills rattlesnakes by squeezing them and is highly resistant to their venom, so rattlers are regular prey.

A rattlesnake's heat-sensing pits form an image on the same principle as which device?

Pinhole camera. Heat passes through each pit's small opening onto a membrane inside, and the brain merges that blurry thermal picture with what the eyes see.

Which rodent waves a heated tail at rattlesnakes, a signal aimed at their infrared sense?

Ground squirrel. California ground squirrels warm their tails when flagging at rattlesnakes but not at gopher snakes, which cannot sense heat, and a warm-tailed robot squirrel put rattlesnakes on the defensive.

Benjamin Franklin once joked that the colonies should ship rattlesnakes to Britain in return for what?

Its transported convicts. Britain had blocked colonial laws against importing felons, so Franklin's 1751 satire offered rattlesnakes in thanks, to be let loose in London's parks and the gardens of Members of Parliament.

What shape are a rattlesnake's pupils in bright light?

Vertical slits. Like a cat's, the pupils can close almost completely by day and open wide after dark, when rattlesnakes do much of their hunting.

What happens when a rattlesnake loses one of its fangs?

A spare fang moves into place. Fangs wear out and break, so each has a row of replacements growing behind it, and even newborns arrive with working fangs and venom.

Where do a rattlesnake's fangs sit when not in use?

Folded against the palate. Hinged bones in the upper jaw swing the fangs upright as the snake strikes, and muscles around the venom glands squeeze venom down through them.

Rattlesnake venom is mainly what type?

Hemotoxic. It destroys tissue and disrupts blood clotting, which is why a bite brings severe pain, swelling and internal bleeding.

Which small rattlesnake has venom considered among the most toxic of any snake in the Western Hemisphere?

The tiger. Its small head holds little venom, but drop for drop that venom is rated among the deadliest of any rattlesnake, with toxins that attack both nerves and muscle.

The rattle is made of hollow interlocking segments of what material?

Keratin. It is the same material as your fingernails; the hollow segments fit loosely inside one another and knock together when the tail shakes.

The 'shaker' muscles that vibrate the rattle fire about how many times per second?

50 is about average. The tailshaker muscles are among the fastest in any vertebrate, and each twitch costs so little energy that the snake can sustain its buzz.

A rattlesnake adds a new segment to its rattle each time it does what?

Sheds its skin. That can happen three or four times a year, and old segments snap off, so counting them will not tell you a rattlesnake's age.

Why is a newborn rattlesnake's rattle silent?

It has only one segment. A newborn carries a single 'button' on its tail, and the buzz comes from segments knocking together, so it must grow more before it can rattle.

A 2016 study proposed the rattle evolved from what pre-existing behaviour?

Tail vibration when threatened. Many snakes with no rattle shake their tails at danger, and the closer a species is related to rattlesnakes, the more its shaking matches theirs in speed and duration.

A male rattlesnake can often be told from a female by which feature?

A thicker, longer tail. It houses his paired reproductive organs, the hemipenes, and tapers gradually, whereas a female's tail narrows abruptly behind the vent.

A rattlesnake's heart has three chambers, but which reptiles have four?

Crocodiles. Crocodilians share the four-chambered heart with birds, their closest living relatives, while a rattlesnake's two atria empty into a single ventricle.

Where do rattlesnake eggs stay until the young emerge?

Inside the mother's body. She carries them for about three months and gives birth to live young, each wrapped in a thin membrane that it breaks through to take its first breath.

Male rattlesnakes competing over mates perform intertwined wrestling bouts known as what?

Combat dances. The rivals rear up, twine together and each tries to push the other to the ground, until the larger male usually drives the smaller one away.

Female rattlesnakes can mate in autumn yet delay pregnancy until spring by storing what?

Sperm. Females keep it for months in internal pouches and fertilise their eggs the following spring, so the young are born in the warmth of late summer.

A protein in pygmy rattlesnake venom inspired a hospital drug given to patients suffering what?

Heart attacks. The drug, eptifibatide, copies a venom protein that stops platelets clumping, so doctors use it to keep clots from blocking the heart's arteries.

Rattlesnakes in cold regions travel back each autumn to the same what?

Winter den. Hundreds of snakes may share one rocky shelter, sometimes with other species, and generation after generation returns to it.

For up to how long after being severed can a rattlesnake head still deliver a venomous bite?

An hour. A primitive reflex lets the severed head sense, flick its tongue and bite for 20 to 60 minutes, so a freshly killed rattlesnake still needs careful handling.

Roughly seven in ten snakebite patients in US emergency rooms are what?

Male. A study of emergency visits from 2001 to 2004 put the share at 72%, and many bites come when someone tries to handle the snake instead of backing away.

Of the 7,000 to 8,000 people bitten by venomous snakes in the US each year, about how many die?

About 5. Antivenom and quick hospital care keep deaths rare; a bitten outdoor worker is more likely to be left with a lasting injury than to die.

A rattlesnake's 'dry bite' is one that does what?

Injects no venom. The snake controls how much it releases and may hold venom back from something too big to eat, though every bite still needs a doctor.

As of 2025, the two rattlesnake antivenoms approved in the US are made from the blood of which animals?

Sheep and horses. The animals are given small doses of venom, and the antibodies they make are purified into CroFab, from sheep, or Anavip, from horses.

Churches that handle live rattlesnakes in worship are concentrated in which US region?

Appalachia. A few congregations there act on 'They shall take up serpents', a verse from the closing passage of Mark's Gospel that many scholars regard as a later addition.

The Feathered Serpent of Mesoamerican religion combined a rattlesnake with which bird?

Quetzal. The Aztec name Quetzalcoatl joins quetzalli, the bird's tail feather, to coatl, snake, and early carvings show the god as a rattlesnake covered in feathers.

On the Lewis and Clark expedition, crumbled rattlesnake rattle was given to Sacagawea in the hope of doing what?

Speeding labour. An interpreter swore the remedy never failed, and her son was born within about ten minutes, though Lewis wrote that he doubted the rattle deserved the credit.

Journalist Alistair Cooke said rattlesnake meat tastes 'just like chicken, only' what?

Tougher. Cooke was correcting the locals who, he said, assure goggling unbelievers that rattlesnake is 'just like chicken, only tenderer'.

The coiled rattlesnake on the Gadsden flag sits above which words?

Dont Tread on Me. The flag is named for Christopher Gadsden, the South Carolina delegate who gave it to the new navy's commander, Esek Hopkins, to fly from his flagship.

Which rattlesnake, found from New England to Georgia in colonial times, is coiled on the Gadsden flag?

The timber rattler. It was the rattlesnake the colonists knew from New England to Georgia, and the thirteen rattles on the flag's snake stand for the thirteen colonies.

A rattlesnake abruptly speeds up its rattle as someone approaches, a trick that makes it sound what?

Closer. In a 2021 virtual-reality test, listeners misjudged the distance once the rattle jumped to its faster buzz, a safety margin that researchers think helps keep the snake from being trodden on.

Crotalus horridus, the rattlesnake of the populous US Northeast, was first described in 1758 by whom?

Carl Linnaeus. The Swedish naturalist named it in the 1758 tenth edition of his Systema Naturae, the book zoologists treat as the starting point for all animal names.

The sidewinder's 'horns' are raised scales located where?

Above its eyes. The raised scales may shade the eyes or shield them when the snake lies almost buried, and they earn it the name horned rattlesnake.

The sidewinder's looping sideways crawl is thought to help it do what?

Grip loose desert sand. It throws its body forward in loops so that only two short stretches touch the hot ground at once, leaving a row of J-shaped tracks.

Sweetwater hosts what is billed as the world's largest rattlesnake round-up each March in which US state?

Texas. The Sweetwater Jaycees have run it since 1958, while several round-ups elsewhere have turned into wildlife festivals where the snakes are not killed.

What gives a rattlesnake's head its distinctly triangular shape?

Large venom glands. They bulge at the base of the jaws on each side, and the wide head is a useful warning sign when a rattlesnake has lost its rattle.

What is the winter dormancy that rattlesnakes enter, similar to hibernation, called?

Brumation. Unlike a hibernating mammal, a brumating snake still needs an occasional drink and may come out to bask on a mild day.

Scent particles from a rattlesnake's flicking tongue are carried to which structure in its mouth?

Jacobson's organ. It sits in the roof of the mouth, which is why snakes seem to smell with their tongues, and a rattlesnake uses it to trail prey it has struck and released.

Which rattlesnake gives its name to the paralysing nerve toxin found in its most dangerous venom?

Mojave. Its nerve toxin, isolated in 1975, can paralyse breathing while leaving little damage around the bite, and some other rattlesnakes carry close copies of it.