{"id":20310,"date":"2025-01-17T13:25:15","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T14:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20310"},"modified":"2025-01-17T14:30:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T14:30:04","slug":"rain-collecting-rattlesnakes-give-new-meaning-to-thirst-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20310","title":{"rendered":"Rain-Collecting Rattlesnakes Give New Meaning to \u2018Thirst Trap\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A new study reveals the surprising ways rattlesnakes have evolved to collect water in the desert.<\/p>\n

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You are in a desert and dying of thirst. All of a sudden, storm clouds appear overhead, and the sky starts to spit tiny drops of liquid. How would you quickly make the most of the potentially lifesaving precipitation?<\/p>\n

One more thing, you don\u2019t have any hands.<\/p>\n

Prairie rattlesnakes have evolved an easy solution to this problem. They simply coil up and turn themselves into rain-collecting pancakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a behavior that is seen in several different species of snakes,\u201d said Scott Boback, a herpetologist and ecologist at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. But \u201cmost of that information has been very anecdotal.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all, rattlesnakes don\u2019t like being found. And precipitation in arid environments is infrequent. If Dr. Boback and his colleagues wanted to study the rain-harvesting phenomenon, they realized they\u2019d have to make it rain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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With garden sprinklers and video cameras at a well-known rattlesnake hibernaculum just outside Steamboat Springs, Colo., Dr. Boback and his team recorded nearly 100 snakes reacting to simulated rainfall. That allowed them to quantify the behavior and break it into stages.<\/p>\n

Not only did they observe snakes drinking off their own flattened bodies, as well as the ground, but they also saw snakes lean over and take sips off their neighbors. They also found that snakes in large aggregations were more likely to drink off other snakes than those in small clusters were.<\/p>\n

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A new study reveals the surprising ways rattlesnakes have evolved to collect water in the desert.You are in a desert and dying of thirst. All of a sudden, storm clouds appear overhead, and the sky starts to spit tiny drops of liquid. How would you quickly make the most of the potentially lifesaving precipitation?One more thing, you don\u2019t have any hands.Prairie rattlesnakes have evolved an easy solution to this problem. They simply coil up and turn themselves into rain-collecting pancakes.\u201cIt is a behavior that is seen in several different species of snakes,\u201d said Scott Boback, a herpetologist and ecologist at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. But \u201cmost of that information has been very anecdotal.\u201dAfter all, rattlesnakes don\u2019t like being found. And precipitation in arid environments is infrequent. If Dr. Boback and his colleagues wanted to study the rain-harvesting phenomenon, they realized they\u2019d have to make it rain.With garden sprinklers and video cameras at a well-known rattlesnake hibernaculum just outside Steamboat Springs, Colo., Dr. Boback and his team recorded nearly 100 snakes reacting to simulated rainfall. That allowed them to quantify the behavior and break it into stages.Not only did they observe snakes drinking off their own flattened bodies, as well as the ground, but they also saw snakes lean over and take sips off their neighbors. They also found that snakes in large aggregations were more likely to drink off other snakes than those in small clusters were.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20312,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20310"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20313,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20310\/revisions\/20313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}