Blacktailed Rattlesnakes can live in a wide variety of habitats, from high pine forests to low desert around sea level. This one was found in Greenlee County, Arizona several years ago.
Blacktailed Rattlesnake from Greenlee County, Arizona
Tag: arizona
Arizona Black Rattlesnake At Its Den
An Arizona Black Rattlesnake comes out of its den for the day on a warm Spring day. This site is shared by three species of rattlesnakes, and at least a few species of other snakes. As spring egress progresses, each will use the area slightly differently, emerging, staging, and eventually distributing on their own schedules.
Sonoran Whipsnake
A Sonoran Whipsnake from near Phoenix, Arizona. These fast, diurnal animals can be seen on occasion darting across trails or roads, even in the peak heat of the day. Large, forward-facing eyes and a body style made for speed mean that any lizard that ends up in its sight isn’t going to have a good day.
They show up from time to time at homes at the very edges of the city. Based on our records of snake encounters at homes over the last 16 years, they are not as good at adapting to semi-developed areas as other, similar species, like coachwhips.
A few years ago, I saw what would be the only known record of one in the Piestewa Peak preserve area. It was in the middle of the night, resting in loose rocks in front of a spot where several Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnakes were about to give birth. Sonoran Whipsnakes include rattlesnakes in their diet, and I assumed it was waiting for that opportunity. Unfortunately, I chose to slowly reach for my camera rather than dive into to rocks to grab it, and it escaped without a photo record. So, an observation went into the notes for the night’s field session, but the preserve is still without an official record.
da Frota JG, Sawaya RJ, Spina F. Masticophis bilineatus (Sonoran Whipsnake). Prey. Herpetol Rev. 2003;34(2):149. Available from: https://search.proquest.com/openview/44f1b08a1f0af1087379c71528a42f09/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=3345
Hibbitts TJ. Masticophis bilineatus. Herpetol Rev. 2023;54(1):128. Available from: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&profile=ehost&scope=site&authtype=crawler&asa=N&AN=171889940
Western Diamondback Rattlesnake Warning
A Western Diamondback Rattlesnake communicating with me in the same way it does with any of the many predators that it fears. He stands up as tall as he can, hissing, rattling, and making the idea of coming any closer a decidedly bad idea.
What it isn’t doing: showing aggression. This behavior, even though it may seem scary (as it is intended to), is not a sign of “attack”, but a small animal’s best attempt at preserving its own life. For some reason, humans have a very hard time understanding this, and the incredibly simple way for everyone to leave safely: walk away. After a few photos, that’s what I did. Thanks for the heads up, snake.
Arizona Ridgenosed Rattlesnake
An Arizona Ridgenosed Rattlesnake from the southeastern corner of Arizona. I photographed this young snake back in 2014 (that’s how behind I am in photos).
At this point, assuming she hasn’t met an end by fire, drought, bear, poacher, or any of the other ways a small snake can enter the carbon cycle, she is an older adult. She may have given birth every couple or few years, and still has a lot of life to live. Rattlesnakes can live for decades, continually learning to make better use of their environment and home range.
Blacktailed Rattlesnake At Night
A Blacktailed Rattlesnake we found on a late night hike of a canyon near Phoenix, Arizona. These are common snakes in mountainous regions, often seen by hikers. During the summer in desert areas, they are often most often nocturnal, usually encountered around sunup and just after dark. This one, fortunately, lives far from where people may come across it on accident.
Speckled Rattlesnake At Dawn and Thermal Tolerances
A Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnake resting along the top of a drainage after a night out. During the summer months, these and other rattlesnake species are primarily nocturnal, being encountered by people mostly in the hour before and after sunrise. As soon as the sun reaches the area, these snakes make a beeline for their aestivation sites to hide for the day.
The fact that rattlesnakes are often nocturnal and that they spend much of their lives avoiding excess heat is a surprise to many people. The misconception is that reptiles, ectotherms who get heat from the environment rather than produce it themselves, want it hot … the hotter the better. You’ll see this soon, in the form of comments like “it’s getting hot! It brings the rattlers out”, warnings from fire departments, and even articles in local news when temperatures stabilize in the triple digits for the year.
But thermoregulation means being the right temperature, not just as hot as possible. In fact, a body temperature sustained above around 105˚F can kill a rattlesnake. Interestingly, the upper terminal temperature seems to be similar across rattlesnake species, regardless of the environment they’re found. It’s often over 100˚F when these snakes begin their move back to their underground hiding spots, meaning they ride the line of death very closely, staying out as long as possible for the chance to find prey. If they are disturbed during this crawl for too long, or escape into the wrong hiding spot, it can quickly kill them.
We have learned this first-hand, unfortunately, from finding snakes within our study area who were first found by snake enthusiasts, likely mid-crawl. Thanks to Instagram, individual snakes that had died this way can be tied to individual events where a prolonged photo session and subsequent release of a heat-stressed snake resulted in death. To some herpers, it may seem like gatekeeping to discuss this kind of thing, but dead snakes are a lesson to those who would hear it.
During the summer, you may see us be critical of snake relocations performed by the fire department, and well-meaning individuals. This comes from the practice of releasing these snakes to improper cover, where they will be very unlikely to find survivable conditions in time. Every time you see a video of someone releasing a snake to open ground or random creosote mid-day, the relocator watches it crawl away and may be satisfied that they helped the animal … but these snakes do not survive for long.
Claunch, N. M., Lind, C. M., Lutterschmidt, D. I. (2023). Stress ecology in snakes. In Penning, D. A. (Ed.), The Stress Ecology of Reptiles. ResearchGate.
Cadena, V., Andrade, D. V., Bovo, R. P., Tattersall, G. J. (2013). Evaporative respiratory cooling augments pit organ thermal detection in rattlesnakes. Journal of Comparative Physiology A, 199(9), 883–893.
Castro, S. A., Prado, J. V., Wang, T. (2024). The relevance of vascular adjustments to hemodynamic control in the face of temperature change in Crotalus durissus. Journal of Experimental Biology, 227(15).
Laursen, W. J., Anderson, E. O., Hoffstaetter, L. J., Bagriantsev, S. N., & Gracheva, E. O. (2015). Species-specific temperature sensitivity of TRPA1. Temperature, 2(1), 142–157.
Kamees, L. K. (2022). Competing Behaviors of Thermoregulation and Ambush Foraging in the Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus horridus): A Mechanistic Assessment of Thermal Behavior (Doctoral dissertation, University of Arkansas).
Tattersall, G. J., Sinclair, B. J., Withers, P. C., Fields, P. A., Seebacher, F., Cooper, C. E., & Maloney, S. K. (2012). Coping with thermal challenges: physiological adaptations to environmental temperatures. In Comprehensive Physiology, Wiley.
LaDuc, T. J., Borrell, B. J., & Dudley, R. (2005). Respiratory cooling in rattlesnakes. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A, 141(4), 509–516.
Carnes-Mason, M. D., & Beaupre, S. J. (2025). Temperature manipulation induces ecdysis in lab-held rattlesnakes. Ichthyology & Herpetology, 113(2), 274–281.
Banded Rock Rattlesnake from Arizona
A Banded Rock Rattlesnake from southeastern Arizona.
Gila Monster In A Burn Scar
A Gila Monster moving through a burn scar in central Arizona. Last year, fire from an illegal campfire swept through the area, fueled by invasive grasses. This one managed to survive, but shows signs of how close it came to death – the top of its head and patches on its tail are black scars.
Wildfires like this are now common, as fires, OHV use, and target shooting spark them constantly. With hotter, drier years, and increased human activity in the area, another fire is likely as soon as there’s enough regrowth to burn. The landscape in another decade will be unrecognizable, without saguaro, native trees, and erosion erasing the rocky arroyos where the only surface water was available.
If your first reaction is to deny human involvement in all of this, a better use of time would be to stop watching political messaging and start looking out your own window.
Barra, C., Fule, M., Beers, R., McGuire, L., & Youberg, A. (2025). Soil biogeochemical and hydraulic property response to wildfire across forested ecosystems of the Santa Catalina Mountains, Arizona, USA. CATENA. Elsevier.
Boyle, J. M. (2025). Spatial and temporal trends of reburns in western US forests (Undergraduate thesis, Gettysburg College). Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College.
Jiménez Morillo, N. T., Rosa Arranz, J. M., & Miller, A. Z. (2024). Soil degradation: Local solutions for a global problem. CSIC Digital Repository.
A Very Big Sonoran Lyresnake
A beast of a Lyresnake! These are typically slender snakes, but this has been very successful. At first it looked like a gophersnake, with a chunky build and round face. These are cryptic snakes that few people that live in Arizona, even born here, will ever see.
