Rattlesnakes

Alex Re

Hello, welcome to on wildlife. I'm your host, Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you. We take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week. And I guarantee you you're gonna come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. This episode is going to be filled with a lot of cool information because I got to interview Tony Daley Cruz, who is the President and Executive Director of the rattlesnake Conservancy. So for this episode, you may want to keep your distance because we're talking about venomous reptiles that can be recognized by a single sound rattlesnakes.

rattlesnakes are a group of venomous snakes who have a rattle at the end of their tail that makes noise when it's shaken. And we're going to talk more about the rattles when I sit down with Tony. There are about 70 different species of rattlesnakes around today. And they can be mainly found in North South and Central America, usually in warmer climates. This is because like most reptiles, they're ectotherms, meaning that the outside environment controls their body temperature. And many species of rattlesnakes like to live near rocks, which give them protection from predators, and a place where they can bask in the sun if they need to warm themselves up. One of the most commonly known rattlesnake species are the western and eastern Diamondbacks. The Western Diamondback lives in the western United States, while the eastern Diamondback lives in the south eastern United States. It got its name from the diamond pattern that it has on its back. And the eastern Diamondback is the largest species of rattlesnake. He can get to around five feet long, not something you want to mess with. Another rattlesnake that you might be familiar with is the Sidewinder which usually resides in the desert. The name Sidewinder comes from the way that they move, kind of slithering in a diagonal, but this gives them a lot of speed and traction on the sand. They can slither up to 18 miles per hour. rattlesnakes are carnivores, usually eating small rodents and other small mammals. And this is part of the reason that they have this venom, they can use it to incapacitate their prey, they can strike so quickly that you wouldn't even be able to see it coming. And after paralyzing their prey, they don't chew on their food, they swallow it whole. And they have a few really cool adaptations in order to make this happen. First of all, they're able to stretch their jaw extremely far back, which allows them to take in the entire animal without taking bites out of it. They also have muscles that helped to move their prey down their throat into their digestive tract. And they don't really need to eat as often as we do. They only need to eat once every few weeks because it takes a much longer time for them to digest their food. You may think that because rattlesnakes are reptiles, they lay eggs, but this is only partially true. The mothers actually incubate the eggs inside of her body, and then their birth live. The mothers don't really hang around for long after they're born, sometimes leaving them to fend for themselves after less than a day. Okay, we're gonna take a break. But when we get back, you're gonna hear my interview with Tony Daly Cruz, who's been around his fair share of rattlesnakes. We've got another notable figure in science to talk about. Today, I'm recognizing one garima thigh. She was an environmental activist who founded the green belt movement. This movement promotes environmentalism, and has helped women in Kenya plant over 50 million trees. And it's still going on today. She was also the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize. She's done so much for our Earth, she deserves to be a household name. If you want to learn more about when guarding the thigh for this series, you can visit on wildlife.org. Okay, we're back. Here's my interview with Tony. Hi, Tony, how you doing? Hey, how's it going, man, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming on to talk about rattlesnakes. I'm really excited to get into it. First, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in rattlesnakes?

Tony Daly-Crews

Sure, yeah. I'm super pumped to be on here and chat with you about rattlesnakes. I'm the sir. bread and butter that I work with. I'm the executive director of an organization called the rattlesnake Conservancy. We're a relatively small group right now small nonprofit based out of the southeast. I'm actually in the desert southwest and Arizona. We've got a chapter that certain expand out here in the desert southwest, but we're mostly working with rattlesnakes, and North and South America, we have a really robust education program as well as a research program that's in house as well as research that we fund. So it's it's a really diverse group and team that we work with and just excited to talk to you about rattlesnakes and some of the work that we do.

Alex Re

That's, that's so cool. You guys are doing some really great work. So you talked a little bit about some research that you conduct and some that you fund. So what kind of research Have you personally been a part of or conducted on rattlesnakes?

Tony Daly-Crews

Absolutely. So you know, in my role as executive director, unfortunately, don't get as much field time as I'd like to much of my time is spent, you know, doing the fundraising and networking portions of the organization's strategic leadership. But we have a number of research programs as an organization that we're working on right now. One of them is actually the large disease monitoring study in the southeast, we're monitoring this virus called a teta deno virus, and it's one that's been detected both in captivity and rattlesnakes as well as in the wild. And there's not much known about right now. We don't know if it's like the common cold for snakes, or if it's something that's a serious risk that's out there trying to learn a little bit about it. We've got another one that we're going to be kicking out up this next fall, where we're looking at the impacts of translocation and Eastern diamond accidents, basically, moving a snake from one place to another on there's no real specified distance that defines translocation, and that's something that we're trying to do is figure out okay, what what is the distance that would define translocation? And what are some of the considerations we should look at for survival of rattlesnakes after they've been moved? Because, as you know, um, you know, a lot of times people don't like having rattlesnakes in their yard, you know. So they're, they're calling us they're calling nuisance wildlife companies, or whomever they can find, say, Hey, can you come move it in the best case scenario calling us to come and move on. In the worst case, you know, sometimes people don't have the best reaction to them in their backyard. But one of the things we want to look at is see how well those species are doing another one that we're kicking up this year, as well as actually looking at monitoring submontane species, which are mountain species of rattlesnakes, in the desert southwest, there's just not a whole lot of information known about their population status. And there's a there's been a lot of people that have been out in those areas, whether it's just from like a tourism perspective, or people want to go and photograph them in the wild, which is great. And we support that. And there's also pretty heavy cattle grazing in some of these areas. So we want to take a look at these populations and see how they're doing. See how they're reacting to climate change as well, with these being montane. Species climates change pretty significantly in some of these areas. So those are a couple of the projects I'm working on right now that we're getting started up, you know, a lot of my skill sets are in some of our, like strategic mappings for these species where we're doing some geospatial analysis. So some of these are we're trying to create different maps or models that determine habitat suitability for species and look at our scale conservation planning for them.

Alex Re

Well, that's, that's great. And I think everybody should know that all of this research is really important for conservation and figuring out, the more we know about a species is, the more we're able to help their conservation and help that animal thrive.

Tony Daly-Crews

Yeah, absolutely. And there's not much funding out there for this type of work, right. So, you know, when you see people working on it, it's often going to be either people that have some self funded research that they're doing on it, you might have a university research, but they got a big grant for something else, and they're kind of tacking that on to it. And, you know, one of the things that sets our organization apart from many others is we are one of the only organizations that offers research grants specific to just venomous reptiles and not not like studying their venom actually studying the natural history and conservation of those species. Because that's, that's what our priority is.

Alex Re

Yeah, that's, that's so important. And thank you for doing that work that not a lot of people want to do. Yeah, for sure. So we all know that rattlesnakes have a rattle at the end of their tail. Could you talk about what this rattles actually made out of? Because I feel like a lot of people think that it's hollow and has some kind of like, balls inside of it that make a sound when you shake it, and what do they use that rattle for?

Tony Daly-Crews

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the the general consensus when we talk to the public, you know, we'll have folks come up and ask us about, you know, rattles and rattlesnakes and one of the things that we really like to do because we do a lot of education and outreach programs, you know, rattles on rattlesnakes will often break off, whether that's in captivity or in the wild and we'll actually bring some of those to the public events and let people get their hands on and see what they feel like and see what the mechanics are of them. And to tell you a little bit about rattles themselves, you know, so it's actually a little bit of a I don't want to call it contentious but a hotly debated item. In the research community about really what the evolution of the rattle was for, you know, you see a lot of information out there about kind of an APA somatic, which is, you know, basically a mimicry type thing that that rattlesnakes were using to let other animals know, they were dangerous. And, you know, whether that be prey items, or I'm sorry, predators that were trying to hurt them, or maybe grazing on the lips or something like that in their area that may have stepped on them. You know, there's a lot of information floating out there that that suggests that might be true. But there's, there's also a lot of situations where we're looking at these rattles that there might be other reasons for why it evolved. And I don't have an answer for you, I wish I did. This is a really cool subject that researchers are getting into right now. But you know, there's a lot of different reasons it could have evolved in the species, whether it be you know, like I said, as a defensive mechanism to keep, you know, a large animal from stepping on them, or to just let other animals and other dangerous they don't come and try and eat them later. As far as what they're made of, they're made of keratin, it's the same stuff that's that our fingernails are made of. So it's kind of a thin material. And they're actually pretty brittle. If they they hit their rattle on like a rock or snagging on something or something like that, often the rattle is going to break off and they might leave it behind. And these Yeah, on the rails, there, they develop each time the snake sheds, a new segment is added to the rattle. So, you know, snakes can show multiple times a year, especially when they're younger, they're going to shed a lot. So you're gonna see a lot of new segments added to the rattle as they get older, they may only share it a couple times a year at most. And oftentimes, a lot of people will hear some of the mess about you know, can you tell the AIDS or rattlesnake by the length of its rattle? And, you know, course, intuitively, you might say, Yeah, that makes sense, right? You know, every year, they're gonna shed their skin, but you know, it's not necessarily the case, we, because like I mentioned a second ago, they do add a segment every time they shed and that can be a bunch of times over the years. And because they break off, you may not know if that's the original segment that that rattlesnake was born was when you're looking at it. Um, and as far as you know, something bouncing around them, you know, they are entirely hollow, they they slap against each other to create this reverberates inside of the the rattle. And instead of like a thrashing motion, it's more of like a wave motion that the rattle goes through while they're rattling it, which is really neat.

Alex Re

That's so cool. And I think a lot of people just had no idea. So I would love to actually touch a rattlesnake rattle that would be really Yeah,

Tony Daly-Crews

for sure. in Jacksonville sometimes.

Alex Re

Also, something that is commonly seen in snakes is kind of like sticking out their tongue frequently. So I was just wondering, what does this mean?

Tony Daly-Crews

So snakes tongues are really amazing. So snakes use their tongues to pick up scent particles in the areas around them. Now, the tongue itself is not a nose, like what you are, I would, you know, think of them, we're looking at mammals, but they do have an organ in the top of their mouth that those scent particles are actually deposited in the top of their mouth. And those scent particles can actually tell an animal or snake the direction of what they're smelling, which is really cool. And that's kind of why you see that fork structure. You know, when they put the sound particles on what they call the Jacobson's organ on the top of their mouth, you'll have more scent particles on one side of that fork tongue than the other. And that can tell us like, hey, I need to go that direction. And it's it's really neat because it helps them track scent trails of prey items, and you can actually observe a lot of species of snake, when they catch a scent trail, they'll stop the flick their tongue for a couple of minutes. And then they'll start following along the area where that strongest central is, which is really neat. And that's generally more active predators, snakes, you know, some of the most rattlesnakes are more ambush predator type. So they'll find a kind of game trail that's running through their area, and they'll set up shop right next to a game trail and wait for their next dinner, I don't come running through. That's pretty neat.

Alex Re

That's amazing. That's really cool. And speaking of their prey, rattlesnakes are venomous. So how do they inject their venom into their prey? And how does the venom actually work? That might kill an animal or cause some bodily harm?

Tony Daly-Crews

Sure, so you know, as you might imagine them is extremely complicated subject. You know, as an organization, you know, we teach a number of classes that we discuss them and, and how venom impacts the body as well as prey items. And we actually dedicate several hours to this during the training where we're going through it, but I'll try and put it in a nutshell, that's that can so you know, all of the rattlesnakes that you see in the world, and we of course, have multiple types of venomous snakes in the world. But all rattlesnakes have a very specific thing structure and it's called solennelle glyphis, which is a scientific term for but more simply put, it's a hinge thing. So I'm sure many people have probably seen you know, some taxidermied snake somewhere. With their mouth open and their fangs, you know, kind of out of their mouth. And a lot of people wonder when they see that they're like, okay, they've got some really big things in their mouth, where are those things go and when they close their mouth, though, and these hinge things actually fold up into the top of their mouth, they're they're curved things, they go all the way up into the top of their mouth. And on top of that was really neat. his fangs are actually shed as well, just like, you know, some other species that you see out there. So, you know, the snakes aren't born with the same set of things that they have, when they're 20 years old, you know, some of them can live 2030 years or more on some of these specimens, which is neat. And those fangs every time they shed their skin, oftentimes, they're going to shed their fangs or even if they break a thing, because they are pretty brutal. You know, sometimes they might try to bite for a prey item, and they might hit something and break it or a prey item thrashes around or something like that, they can break the thing off, and they'll actually swallow it when they shed it. Because you might think if they're shedding it, they're gonna want to spit out of their mouth, they actually do ingest those those things. And interestingly enough, you can find them in their feces later on, you know, some of our volunteers like to go, you know, rummaging through this snake feces afterwards and find some things and they'll you know, make a little necklace or something like that out with them. You know, from a venom, production point of view. So venom is extremely complicated. But there's a couple of different broad different types of venom that you hear about there, you might hear the term on neurotoxin or cytotoxin. And some of these rattlesnakes, it depends on the species. And even within each individual species, you can see variation in venom types within populations, which is really interesting. Out here in Arizona, where I live, we have a species called the Mojave rattlesnake. And in one part of the state, they have a really nasty neurotoxin called a Mojave toxin. And, and the other part of the state, they don't have that it's primarily just the cytotoxin. So, you know, it's, yeah, it really is. And from like, you know, medical toxicology point of view, you know, we can talk about this after this if you want. But we've, there's a lot of applications in the medical field that are being used with phenom, and when you see a species that even within one species has that variation, you know, one population, you could learn something about a particular disease or way that you can use that venom that you might not from another, which is really amazing, and lends to some of the reasons for conserving some of these species. You know, a lot of people are like, Well, why do we need them everywhere? And, you know, that's one of the things I'll often point to with that venom variation, because there's definitely there is a human benefit there. And then we may have a medicinal purpose that could come out of it, as well as just conservation of the species in general. So that's some pretty neat stuff.

Alex Re

Yeah, that's really cool. And you probably don't want to get bitten by one of these guys. Or you probably want to go to the hospital as soon as you do.

Tony Daly-Crews

Oh, for sure. Yeah, no. And, you know, any venomous snake no matter what, you know, we we sometimes will hear folks in some of these areas, say something like a pygmy rattlesnake or a Copperhead, you shouldn't go to a hospital for it. And that's not the case, you should always seek medical attention. There are cases where venomous snakes can have what's called a dry bite where no venom is injected, but there's really no way for you to know that you've got to go to hospital, wait it out and see if you have symptoms, and sometimes symptoms don't manifest right away, especially with neurotoxins. It can be a few hours after you got bit before you see any symptoms,

Alex Re

though. Well, and yeah, you definitely don't want to take the chance on that one. So, do you know anything about rattlesnake Roundup, and how they impact populations of rattlesnakes?

Tony Daly-Crews

Yeah, absolutely. So rattlesnake roundups, these have been going on for a really long time. And it's kind of a you know, morbid subject, and people sometimes want to avoid talking about it because it is pretty sad. So what a rattlesnake roundup is, is the number of states on there six different states in the United States that have these rattlesnake roundups, and within them, there's varying degrees of how collections occur and whether or not they actually kill rattlesnakes in them. Principally in Texas, you know, the biggest one that we see it's called the Sweetwater round up, you know, snakes are collected by the 1000s. And brought to that round up where, you know, they're, they're killed. They're on site for, you know, public display, people watch it. Some of its pretty gruesome on how they do it. You know, there's young children there and things like that, all the way to the other end of the spectrum, where some of the roundups might collect rattlesnakes, but they release them later. And even beyond that, which are the ones that we actually support, and some of them have, they kind of keep this historical name of Roundup, we encourage them to move away from using that. There are some that have turned into conservation festivals. You know, one of them that's a big conservation one is called the the Claxton rattlesnake festival in Georgia. That was Around up for Eastern Diamondback rattlesnakes for many years. And Eastern Diamondbacks are one of our flagship species that we work with, there's not many of them left in the wild. They've, they require big range to live. So you know, they have to have these big, contiguous tracts of land to survive and thrive. But that one, it converted to a conservation festival. And you know, another really cool thing that just happened recently was a festival called wiggum rattlesnake festival, in Georgia as well. And just this year, they made the announcement that they're going to be switching from around up to the festival, which is a huge conservation win. And the way that we support these festivals is will usually go out, we'll set up you know, an education booth will provide the festival with any resources that they might need, whether that be put, bring some animals to display for the public to checkout, be there to answer questions, do presentations on a stage, or we might, you know, take a snake up there and talk about snake conservation. And, you know, sometimes we'll have a rattlesnake with us that will use an acrylic tube where we restrain part of the rattlesnake and we let a lot of times younger children get their first chance to touch a rattlesnake in a positive way. So it's not, you know, having their first interaction isn't a negative way where, you know, parents killing in their backyard or something, their first time is actually touching one at an education Festival, which is really cool. That's, that's

Alex Re

really cool. And it's just, that's an awesome way of turning something that is harmful to these animals into something that's actually benefiting them, which is awesome. So all right, for sure. What are some of the other challenges that rattlesnakes are facing right now?

Tony Daly-Crews

Absolutely. So you know, just like pretty much every other species in the developed world, I mean, you know, rattlesnakes are definitely harmed by some of the development that we're seeing around the country, specifically, roads, those snakes are really susceptible to road mortality on rattlesnakes, especially so and that's because oftentimes, depending on the climate, where they're at, you know, snakes will hang out on the roads just after dark to soak up any remaining warmth that's on the road. And, of course, they're often right where the tire tracks are coming through. And you know, sometimes, and oftentimes, especially in many areas, people purposely swerved to try and run them over in those situations. You know, another big issue for rattlesnakes is actually management. So you know, some of these and when I say management, I mean, habitat management through things like prescribed fire. In many areas, especially the southeast, you know, with increasing urban development in areas, a lot of places can't receive the same prescribed fire regimes that the ecosystem was evolved to deal with. And in those situations, the habitat where those rattlesnakes are foraging and finding rodents may not be suitable for them anymore. And along with that, you know, the area that they can live in gets smaller and smaller every year. And if you remember, earlier, I mentioned, you know, Eastern Diamondbacks require big tracks of area that live, you know, whereas, you know, something like your pygmy rattlesnake doesn't necessarily have a huge home range, they don't need a big area to live in. Another couple of threats that we see out there is, is climate change. And I and I mentioned that earlier. And the reason that climate change is an issue for some of these species is it's actually changing the ecology of the mountains where they live at or is likely to change the ecology of it. And what is is likely to happen is competition with these species will change where, you know, in some of the mountains here in the desert southwest, you'll have an area where one rattlesnake species will live at a specific elevation, another one is a little bit lower, and there might be a little bit of an overlap with many of the species. But you know, some of them might come out compete the other whenever the climate warms on the top of those mountains, where some of the ones that were living at lower elevations because I couldn't quite handle that, that cold gradient, the top of the mountain, are slowly moving up the mountain a little bit more and out competing, the ones that are at the higher elevations. So that's some kind of broad overview, you know, risks and threats that we see the rattlesnakes out, world.

Alex Re

Yeah, that's really sad. And climate change is definitely a huge, huge issue that's impacting so many species, and you just never see the end of what you've done harms it's doing so why should we care about rattlesnakes? And why why are they important to the ecosystems that they live in?

Tony Daly-Crews

Yeah, so this, this is a great question. And you know, oftentimes, when we're interacting with, you know, young children or adults, we get asked this question all the time, you know, can a non venomous snake take the place of a venomous snake because of course, people just don't like the idea of having rattlesnakes around them. You know, and one of the things that we often see in areas is you'll have a significant change in the ecosystem structure when you're taking out really any chain in the ecosystem and I hate to give that generic The answer to that, but let's rattlesnakes in specific, you know, some of these species only occur in certain habitats where other species don't. And where they do, they can play a significant role in ecosystems not only as a predator, but also as a prey item and also as a seed disperser, which is something a lot of people don't think about really crazy. Yeah, yeah, so the way that they work a seed dispersers oftentimes, you know, they'll eat a Rota, who will have on digested seeds in their couches. And those seeds are not digested by the snake. So they're, they're dedicated later on, and they're dispersed. Whereas, you know, when a Rowan's eating, a lot of those seeds are getting ground up, and they may not get dispersed out into the ecosystem afterwards. And there was a recent study a few years ago, that they looked at just that and found that, you know, rattlesnakes were actually significantly dispersers, which was really cool. In beyond that, you know, they also act as prey items, you know, you might have something like a bird of prey that's going to eat them out in the wild, and any number of other species that that can create on them. And beyond that, you know, we can talk a little bit about how venom has played its role in developing modern medicines. So we have some medications out there, like there's one called Integra Lin. It's really commonly commonly used in emergency rooms during open heart surgery, heart failure, and things like that. That medication was actually developed from the dusky pygmy rattlesnake, which is really a significant discovery that happened a number of years ago, and really helped kick off a lot of the study of modern medicine using Venom's. And another one that we see out there, it's not specific to rattlesnakes, but just venom in general, is a medication called captopril, is developed from a snake called Dr. Carra, in South America. And that is a really common blood pressure medication, it's an ACE inhibitor, tons of people take it out there. And that's a medication that was developed from a venomous snake. So if we tie it back to what we were talking about earlier, when you look at conservation of the species, if we are eliminating a population of a species, because, you know, whether it's from urban development or climate change, you know, we have the potential that we're losing the cure for cancer for Alzheimer's. And, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that some of these phantoms have serious pharmaceutical applications that are being researched. You know, I mentioned Alzheimer's, because there's actually some research being done right now, using snake venom, specifically neurotoxins to treat Alzheimer's and reverse damage or stop damage from occurring from Alzheimer's and the brain, which is truly, you know, an absolutely amazing discovery. And, you know, there's there's a pretty long list of different types of medications out there that have been developed from them. But those are a couple that are really significant fines that have been discovered recently.

Alex Re

That's so interesting. So needless to say, I mean, rattlesnakes are not only important for their ecosystems, but for us and the medical community. Yeah, for sure. It's something you never think about. Well, this is going to be my last question. So what is something that the average person can do to help rattlesnakes?

Tony Daly-Crews

Well, it depends on where you live. But if you live somewhere where there's rattlesnakes, you know, the biggest thing to do is give them a break, you know, these, these, seriously the these things, they've got a hard life, you know, a lot of times, they'll have a litter that's born with 20 3040 babies at most. And out of those, only one or two of them are going to make it to adulthood, and that's without human impacts on them. So when you run over an adult, Eastern Diamondback that maybe as a female, maybe as a male on the road, you know, that specimen that you ran over, could have been anywhere from 10 to 20 years old, and you've put that entire ecosystem back, you know, 1020 years or more, along with the number of generations that could have been propagated from that species. So when I say give them a break, I mean, both literally and figuratively, you know, step under breaks, let them cross the road. I'm not asking people to love rattlesnakes, I know that for some people, they just they don't like them. But, you know, if you're willing to give them a pass and say, Hey, you know what, I live in their world, you know, and let them continue to coexist on your property. That's wonderful. And some of the things that go with it. You know, oftentimes, we'll hear folks mentioned they're concerned about their kids or pets in their backyard is looking at ways that you can make your yard not rattlesnake friendly to keep them from interacting with your kids or pets, but still allow them to live in the environment that's around your yard, you know, you might bought up to a conservation area where you get a lot of snakes that end up in your yard, but you don't necessarily need to kill everyone that you can see because they're going to keep coming you're going to still get more later on in that area. So you can do things like rattlesnake fencing, there's the our snake fencing more generally, some folks in different parts of the country will install. It's basically just mesh fabric that goes at the bottom of the fence that precludes most venomous snakes from climbing over the fence and getting into the yard in your area. And you know, some of the other things that you can do to keep them out of your yard is keeping your your grass mowed low don't have a ton of weeds don't have you know, wood piles or big rock piles in your yard that would act as good den sites or places that they can hide out and things like that. So from, you know, if you want to get more involved in conservation beyond that, you know, our organization has tons of volunteering opportunities where, you know, you can link up with our team where we do everything from education at local schools, we do summer camps, as well as up into adult education. We've got training courses that we do, we do a lot of public outreach that we work with different individuals on those, you know, and of course, ultimately, financial support is always welcomed as an organization because there's not much funding hanging out there for rattlesnake conservation. So that's, that's a good gist of different ways that you can get involved and help out with rattlesnakes.

Alex Re

Yeah, definitely. And speaking of that, where can we find some information about your organization?

Tony Daly-Crews

Sure, you can check out our website, which is saved the buzz tails views easy ta ls.org cons a nickname for rattlesnakes, or you can find us on on Facebook and Instagram, you know, under the rattlesnake Conservancy, you know, post a ton of information out there. We do like a meet the species Monday thing every week where you can learn something about a different rattlesnake species every week, as well as different, you know, events and educational opportunities that were involved in.

Alex Re

That's awesome. Everybody should go check them out. And Tony, thanks so much again for joining me today. I really learned so much about rattlesnakes. So thank you.

Tony Daly-Crews

Sure. Thanks, Alex. I appreciate you having us on here and appreciate your support.

Alex Re

Tony had so much cool information about rattlesnakes. It made me realize how misunderstood these animals are and how important they are to our ecosystems. If you're interested in helping rattlesnakes, you should absolutely check out the rattlesnake Conservancy. They're doing really awesome work to educate people about these animals. Some other organizations that help rattlesnakes that you should definitely take a look at, or the rattlesnake Preservation Trust, and advocates for snake preservation. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me as we explored the world of the rattlesnake. You can find the sources that we use for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference at on wildlife.org. Don't forget to tune in next Wednesday to learn about another animal and that's on wildlife.

Jess Avellino

You've been listening to on wildlife with Alex re brought to you every Wednesday.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai