Yesterday we encountered 9 rattlesnakes on our site, two Ridgenosed rattlesnakes(willards) and 7 banded rock rattlesnakes(leps)

The first was a gravid female willards that also contained a food(fed recently)





Then next a young male willards that contained food as well.







The female was a recapture from 02 or 03(HKM?) Both were in excellent health and condition.



Next we encountered a large male lep what was a recapture(5 encounters) He was were he likes to be, first seen in 98.



Then there was a never ending run of leps, that was only limited by time and foot power.







In total there were three recaptures, and many contained food. Surface temps ranged from 54F coldest in the shade, to 126F in the sun, with the average surface temps in the area of the snakes approx. 90F. This was taken with an infrared therometer.

Body temps ranged from 19F to 31.8F, there were taken with a quick read mercury themometer.



There was plenty of lizard activity, they love to watch us harass the snakes. It gives them joy.





So for Terry(TC), you are now getting the picture that what you thought about our snakes was wrong. Now I wonder what you will find if you really investigated your snakes(WI). Not just take information from a very few encounters of yours. Which is the point of this exercise. Your biggist problem is trying to make rules from everything you see( a common occurance)



The reality is, snakes do what they can to survive in all that habitats they occur in. They work each habitat and try to maintain, life events, for the longest possible period. Once the, life events, is restricted below a certain minimum level, snakes no longer exsist. They give way to other animals that are better adapted to those conditions.



For instance, in our area, the four months of the least surface activity for snakes are, Jan, Feb and May and June, in these months there are fewer suitable days that allow surface activity, but remember, there are days of activity. In your area, the winter months may be the months of the least surface activity. But you may not have summer months that restrict activity like we do. So you see, if you call that hibernation, then your hibernate in the winter and ours hibernate in both the summer and winter. But what are some parts of the population doing when not on the surface, sleeping?????????????? hmmmmmmm You may want to think that over. Snakes live underground, not on the surface. The surface is just another tool to complete a task, which they have many. Rattlesnakes are designed to use the surface more often then say, kingsnakes, but they kingsnakes are doing the same things. I imagine this allows more species to exsist in the same area.



So if you perfer to call it(being underground) hibernation, then good on you. I wish you luck with that understanding. I am sure, if you keep investigating, your thoughs(theories, hypothosies) will continue to change and you will outgrow that "hibernation thing" once you start to understand, what snakes are really doing. Please understand(I do), without that experience, I am spitting in the wind, as you have no way to understand what I am saying(no base to work from)



One key item to understand, not all the snakes in any population are doing the same things at the same time. This is very important, activity is task orientated. IF they are doing different tasks, then they have different activities.



The term hibernation is "ok" for a novice understanding of what some snakes do. But once you actually learn more about what snakes are actually doing, and you are no longer a novice, you realize that term loses its usefullness and becomes inaccurate. Hibernation is a poor term for the continued understanding of what "snakes" do.



Lastly there is confusion with, cooling/hibernation, in captivity being compared to cooling/hibernation in nature. These two do not compare or relate in any way(the start of this thread). In captivity its a tool a keeper uses for a intented purpose(to breed), in nature, its a tool to avoid adverse conditions(to conserve or a survival behavior). In nature its not a tool to induce reproduction. In captivity hibernation/cooling is used to induce reproduction. Its used because keepers don't understand, that these snakes include those lover temps in all seasons. If you/keepers included a choice of lower temps at all times, there would be no need to hibernate/cool, and your captives would then do what their wild cousins are doing, using cool as a base and seeking heat as a tool to complete tasks. They, the wild snakes, do this year around, so how can it be called hibernation? Good luck FR

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