Hmmmmm. They called it him, but I think that's a mama snake. Only the females that have had babies (they are live birth reptiles) get that width (and length).
They are pretty polite from the bite standpoint. They rarely strike anything that they can't eat and have a larger % of 'empty' bites on humans than the diamondbacks or Mohave Greens. Means they don't inject venom.
I've got a couple of videos of snakes moving, but I'm the worlds shittiest video editor so nobody's ever seen them :)
I thought it was interesting how they move, nothing we have does that. Nature is wondrous really, the way everything seems to work out...Except when humans fuck it up.
Yeah. Believe it or not, this really started out to be a rant about the dickheads in the desert and I bailed to the snakes :) You can pretty well bet I'll get to the dickheads...
The sidewinder movement is an evolution based on hot sand. They get their entire body off of it every stroke.
Desert dickheads, city dickheads, work dick heads, outback dickeads...Everywhere dickheads. Seems dickhead is the new black these days. I'll look out for your post.
It took me a while to find this video, but you really need to see this @galenkp. I have photographic proof that the rat doesn't always get away...That's pretty cool. I always marvel at how well they film these things. Thanks for the video.
You know, I was once in a situation where I had to administer a few kicks myself...I could have done with kangaroo rat skills at that point but had to make G-dog skills work as best they could. It worked out although I didn't look quite as cool as that rat! :)
It's amazing to me how fast they can react. That rattlesnake strike is FAST. I have pictures of a sidewinder waiting for a rat to die before eating breakfast. I saw the rat make his last little hop.
Human's wouldn't stand much chance, but like you say, probably unlikely it would bite something it couldn't eat. Poor little rats though.