Summary: Scientists have used tiny, noninvasive technologies to study how red diamond rattlesnakes navigate their habitat to hunt and eat. The new snake tech will help scientists protect red diamond rattlesnakes and their desert and coastal sage scrub habitats.

Keeping track of snakes in the wild can be hard.

Red diamond rattlesnakes (scientific name: Crotalus ruber) are a large and venomous species native to southwest California in the U.S. and Baja California in Mexico. As predators, they play a vital role in the ecosystem by keeping rodent populations in check. 

red diamond rattlesnake
A red diamond rattlesnake. Image: Rachel Whitt, CC0, via iNaturalist

Red diamond rattlesnakes face increasing threats from habitat loss and being hit by cars while trying to cross roads. They live either in the desert or in coastal sage scrub, a shrubby, rocky ecosystem that people like to build things in.

The red diamond rattlesnake’s habitat makes monitoring (checking on) them challenging. Coastal sage scrub is very full of bushes and rocks that snakes can hide under. It is also hard to place camera traps in the ecosystem without them being blocked by bushes. 

Even without these challenges, studying these snakes would still be hard, researchers say. “They are extremely reliant on camouflage and crypsis,” says Rulon Clark, a biology professor at San Diego State University. Red diamond rattlesnakes often remain inactive and immobile for a long time. “If you sit there and try to watch them, they just freeze,” Rulon says. “If you’re close enough to sit and stare at the snake, you’re scaring off all the small mammals or other things that might be around.”

Jeff Lemm is a herpetologist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance who studies red diamond rattlesnakes along with Rulon. In the early 2000s, Jeff radio-tagged a few of the snakes in order to track their movements. Radio tags are devices that are attached to an animal and broadcast a radio signal. The biologist studying the animal has a receiver device that can pick up the radio signal. When the animal moves, the biologist can find out where it is going by picking up the radio signal.  

For years, telemetry radios had to be surgically implanted into the snakes in order to track and study them. Image by San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

One major challenge for radio-tagging snakes is that they don’t have any appendages like ears or legs to attach the radio tag to. Jeff had to surgically implant the radio tags inside of the snake. This procedure can be dangerous for the snakes. “Snakes have to come in and out of anesthesia, and there is a risk of infection,” explains Jeff.

Since the radio tag is inside the snake, that is a problem if the scientist has to replace the batteries on the tag. “You have to time it out so that you get the radios back in time before the battery dies, or else you would lose the snake,” explains Jeff.

Jeff’s and Rulon’s teams are working together to reinvent how snakes are monitored and studied.

A red diamond rattlesnake. Image by San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

Since early 2023, the researchers have tracked 17 snakes using noninvasive radio transmitters and accelerometers. Noninvasive means that no surgery is required to attach the devices to the snake. The new radio transmitters can be attached to the base of the snake’s rattle.

Accelerometers are attached near the animal’s neck. An accelerometer is a motion detector device that senses when the animal it is attached to is speeding up, slowing down, or changing direction.

“It is a game changer not having to catch the animal and bring it to the vet and wait for it to recover,” Jeff says. “We could do it right there in the field and get the snake back out and moving in half the time.”

Scientists have used radio transmitters and accelerometers to study red diamond rattlesnakes. Image by San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

The radio transmitters keep the researchers informed about each snake’s location so they can find it at a later stage. Using this location data, the research team can build a map that helps them better understand the snake’s home range.

Researchers also measure the snake’s body temperature using an infrared thermometer, and document key details such as the height and species of vegetation in the region, ground temperature, air temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. “We need this data to help us figure out a lot of things: When are these snakes most active? What’s their ideal basking temperature? When do they move? At what time of the year?” says Jeff .

The accelerometer records the red diamond rattlesnake’s movements in 3D. The team uses this data to map movements and link it to behavioral patterns such as hunting and looking for mates. For example, “when a snake strikes, it goes from being still and coiled to extending its body very quickly, and pushing the head forward,” Rulon says. “We’re able to see the acceleration of the device during that rapid forward motion.”

The accelerometer can detect changes in a snake’s body movements when it swallows a prey and pushes it down into its body. 

As they continue to gather more data and improvise the technology, Jeff and Rulon hope their work in tracking and studying red diamond rattlesnakes can help herpetologists studying snakes around the world.

“Snakes are globally distributed in all the world’s ecosystems, and are a type of animal that is an important predator around the globe,” Jeff says. “I hope the tools we’re building here would be picked up by others to be able to apply for other snake species as well.”

David Brown adapted this story for Mongabay Kids. It is based on an article by Abhishyant Kidangoor, published on Mongabay.com:

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