{"id":2088,"date":"2025-06-16T13:00:03","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T20:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/?p=2088"},"modified":"2025-06-16T13:00:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T20:00:07","slug":"sonoran-sidewinder-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/snakes\/sonoran-sidewinder-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonoran Sidewinder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Sonoran Sidewinder from the Phoenix area, out and about late at night as they tend to do. This one is large, for a small species, and for a male. These snakes are under two feet long, with females being slightly larger as full-grown adults. There are several reasons this may be the case, one of which being that a bigger snake can produce more babies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These rattlesnakes don’t, and may not really be able to, slither like most snakes do. They can move in a straight line rectilinear motion, undulating belly muscles to inch forward. But more typically, they throw a loop of the body forward, past its head, and then bring the rest of the body alongside it. This is the side-winding method they’re named for. It’s a good way to move through a sandy, hot environment … often with some speed. The tracks left behind are a series of unconnected lines with a “J” at the end, pointing in the direction of travel. This is different than is often expected by homeowners, who report a “sidewinder tracks” that are typically from fast-moving nonvenomous snakes, like coachwhips and whipsnakes, moving quickly through soft matrix, leaving a swishing side to side track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yes, there are sidewinders elsewhere in the world … but they’re not closely related to these snakes, and are not rattlesnakes. They are a great example of convergent evolution, where a similar solution evolves to meet similar problems. In this case, it turns out that side-winding is a very efficient way to move for a snake, and sandy deserts on the other side of the world are no different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Webber, M. M., Jezkova, T., Glaudas, X., & Rodr\u00edguez-Robles, J. A. (2016). Feeding ecology of sidewinder rattlesnakes, Crotalus cerastes (Viperidae). Herpetologica, 72(4), 324\u2013330. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1655\/Herpetologica-D-15-00042<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tingle, J. L., & Sherman, B. M. (2022). Scaling and relations of morphology with locomotor kinematics in the sidewinder rattlesnake Crotalus cerastes. Journal of Experimental Biology, 225(7), jeb243817. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1242\/jeb.243817<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blomsten, P., Schuett, G. W., H\u00f6ggren, M., & Clark, R. W. (2016). Fifteen consecutive years of successful reproduction in a captive female sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes). Herpetological Review, 47(2), 231\u2013234. https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/download\/43375448\/Blomsten_et_al_Sidewinder_Reproduction_HR_2016.pdf<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rautsaw, R. M., Hofmann, E. P., et al. (2019). Intraspecific sequence and gene expression variation contribute little to venom diversity in sidewinder rattlesnakes (Crotalus cerastes). Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 286(1902), 20190810. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1098\/rspb.2019.0810<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Webber, M. M., Glaudas, X., & Rodr\u00edguez-Robles, J. A. (2012). Do sidewinder rattlesnakes (Crotalus cerastes, Viperidae) cease feeding during the breeding season? Copeia, 2012(1), 100\u2013105. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1643\/CE-11-056<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leavitt, D. J., & Grimsley, A. A. (2019). Density, recapture probability, biomass, productivity, and population structure of sidewinders (Crotalus cerastes) in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. Herpetology Notes, 12, 577\u2013584. https:\/\/www.biotaxa.org\/hn\/article\/view\/35147\/44449<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Sonoran Sidewinder from the Phoenix area, out and about late at night as they tend to do. This one is large, for a small species, and for a male. These snakes are under two feet long, with females being slightly larger as full-grown adults. There are several reasons this may be the case, one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2089,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[151,153,136,135,139],"tags":[395,495,504],"class_list":["post-2088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cerastes","category-cercobombus","category-rattlesnakes","category-snakes","category-viperidae","tag-sidewinder","tag-convergent-evolution","tag-cerastes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2090,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088\/revisions\/2090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/fieldherper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}