Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We saw today this snake.: http://toxicice.com/images/r0302605.jpg
It has a rattle, so rattlesnake?

We saw it near close to the border between Puebla and Veracruz, habitat: http://toxicice.com/images/r0302599.jpg (but actually a bit more wet)

It looks a lot like: http://vivanatura.org/Sistrurus ravus ExtraPhotos.html

Related question: Is Sistrurus ravus the same as Crotalus ravus (since the above page is named Sistrurus, and the picture caption says Crotalus).

That looks like ravus to me. The large head plates are a giveaway.

Related question: Is Sistrurus ravus the same as Crotalus ravus

Yes. There is some disagreement about its presence in the genus Sistrurus.
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Chris Harrison
Central Texas

I agree. It looks like a ravus to me.

It used to be called Sistrurus ravus, but a paper in Biology of the Vipers said based on Mitochondrial DNA that is actually more closely related to the other snakes in Crotalus rather than the other 2 Sistrurus species.

The paper states that Sistrurus will be used for the northern species (S. catenatus and S. miliarius) and S. ravus will be a member of the genus Crotalus.

I've seen a few books published since this paper came out and they refer to it as Crotalus ravus as well.

Here is the citation
Murphy, R.W., Fu, J., Lathrop, A., Feltham, J.V. and Kovac, K. 2002. Phylogeny of the Rattlesnakes (Crotalus and Sistrurus) Inferred from Sequences of five Mitochondrial DNA Genes. Pp 69-92 In G.W. Schueet, M. Hoggren, M.E. Douglas, H.W. Greene (Eds.), Biology of the Vipers. Eagle Mountain Publishing.