Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I recently adopted two rattlesnakes from a man who knew not at all what he was doing. Both were kept together in a twenty long aquarium, with a hot rock and human heat pat for heat. One, which he told me was a prairie, was actually a mojave. The other he told me was a "central". It is an arizona species, but I am not sure where it is from exactly. It is either a speckled or a tiger, but I am not very familiar with either species, and can't tell which. It has banding on the tail, but it is not really darker that the rest of the markings. Does anyone know any scale counts or anything that can give me a positive ID? It is missing one eye, but otherwise doing really well, eats everything I give it, and has a little attitude, but nothing major. I keep viridis, scutalus, and cerastes, and am really excited about the new addition, I am just wondering what it is. Thank you for the help. I'll try to get pics up later, but my camera is currently missing (just moved).

Speckled and Tigers can appear quite similiar. One way to tell is that the head of a tiger is relatively small compared to a typical rattler and the rattle is quite large compared to others.

I read that too, I don't know why it is so hard for me to tell which it is. The head looks very medium to me. It looks smaller than the speckled pictures I am finding, but bigger than the tigers. Thank you for the reply. i am still going to try and get some pics up.

There are scale count characteristics that will tell but a picture is the way to go.

As far as the scale differences goes, Tigers have the rostral and the prenasal scales in contact with each other. The Speckled (pyrrhus) has small scales separating the rostral from the prenasals.

Thanks a lot guys, looks like a speckled. There is a little row of scales there. I guess it just doesn't have very much tail banding.

Good. Should be about four little scales separating them. The fact that you had said you could not see that the head was small made me think that it is a speckled.

along with the smaller head, the tiger will also lack the coon tail, whereas the speckled will have a couple black and white bands.