Really neat interaction showing off their role as secondary pollinators. Altogether I saw two rattlesnakes and a bullsnake in the span of an hour. This was at the edge of a large black-tailed prairie dog colony in the foothills of the Rockies. I missed the strike by a couple minutes but you can see how big the fangs are in this photo. Both are fairly large adults.
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Not the same prairie dog, but sitting on the other side of the trail. None of the nearby ones cared.
I dunno about you but if I saw something ten times my length eat another one of my kind, my first inclination wouldn't be to plop down and watch.
I figured they'd be going absolutely monkey alerting each other to the snake. Their behaviour was totally normal even within 3m of it. This one's view was obstructed by plants along the trail but surely there was some kind of struggle or something which included a noise.
Maybe the other prairie dog was their colony's (is that what their burrow hole things are called?) version of Thatcher?
They probably understand that once the snake's got somebody the threat is over
The leftist answer to the neoliberal crab bucket story. Prairie dogs will sit cozy knowing one of their own is being devoured because they're safe in the moment. The danger has passed. But what about when it's your turn to be devoured? The snake is vulnerable when occupied, my friends! When its mouth is full that's the time to strike as one!
Ah, thinking like an Englishman who must protect his sheep from the wolves and so drives them to extinction. What the prairie dogs understand is that they are part of an interdependent system of living beings. If they kill this snake while it's vulnerable, a few more of their number might survive. they could kill many snakes this way. But what might the effects be when their predator is gone? Their population would boom, and they'd need to develop agriculture to keep their many children and elderly from starving to death.
If you want to introduce class society to prairie dogs, that's on you.
The story isn't for the prairie dogs... Are... are people out there telling the crab bucket story to crabs?
AMAZING. i thought i was lucky for catching a garden snake snatching a field mouse last year. i never see rattlesnakes
Rattlesnakes are so rare away from their dens. I've been hiking in their habitat regularly for 6 years and have only seem them on 3 separate days. Against the sandstone of the area they're all but invisible until I'm 1m away. Even this one would have been hard to spot without the prairie dog in its mouth and I didn't see the other that day until I was almost within striking distance.
And here I was jazzed to see a common European adder in a nearby forest back in July
He looks huge
This one is definitely the largest I've seen, maybe 1-1.2m in length. The other one that day was half the size. Only bullsnakes, which look very similar to them until you check for the rattle, grow larger here at 2m.
That's still pretty huge compared to adders which max out at around 80cm for females. Grass snakes, the only other type of snake found in mainland Finland typically grow to be around 75-90cm long so those are some pretty big snakes you have there
