radio telemetry – EYNC Rattlesnake Study

Transmitter Removal

It was with a bit of a heavy heart a week ago this morning that I watched my favorite EYNC rattlesnake, Male 37, glide into a hollow log… this time without a transmitter.

Denise and I arrived at Effie Yeaw late on Tuesday, 10 April, and unloaded the boxes of equipment and supplies we would need to remove surgically-implanted transmitters from a dozen rattlesnakes. EYNC’s Executive Director, Torey Byington, had consented to allowing us to take over part of the EYNC kitchen and the wonderful staff graciously shared their lunch room with a make-shift surgical suite for the next few days.

I wanted to allow the telemetered rattlesnakes to hibernate with their transmitters one last winter to complete my 2017 data with verified winter den locations. Plus, because their immune systems and their ability to heal wounds slow down considerably when they’re cold, I routinely avoid surgeries just before hibernation. Thus, I was committed to returning this spring to remove the transmitters.

I was worried about the weather as we prepared for the drive from Arizona. While mid-April is usually warm and the rattlesnakes are very active (females hunting for food and males hunting for females), recent weather had been cloudy with unseasonably cool temperatures and the forecast was for more of the same. Yet, the naturalists at the Nature Center were telling me that visitors had been reporting rattlesnake sightings on the occasional sunny days, so we stuck with the original plan and hoped for the best. We were not disappointed.

Even though it was overcast, cool and breezy, Denise and I headed out into the preserve Wednesday morning to capture as many of the telemetered rattlesnakes as possible. While I usually use only a snake hook and put captured rattlesnakes in a cloth bag, many escape capture with the hook and getting an unhappy rattlesnake safely into a cloth bag is not a quick process. So, for this effort, we used a clamp stick (photo below) and put the snakes in plastic buckets. Grabbing them with the clamp stick is more stressful for some of the snakes but prevents most escapes and putting them in a bucket is quick, easy and safe.

Capturing Male 46 for transmitter removal on 11 April 2018; Denise Garland Photo.

Despite the cool cloudy weather, we were relieved to have nine of the rattle-snakes in buckets by early afternoon!

However, Males 36 and 37 were inaccessible inside hollow logs and, not surprisingly, we had no radio signal from Female 80. Her signal vanished last summer after she ventured into the residential area at the top of the bluff. Her transmitter might have failed prematurely, she could have been carried far away by a hawk or owl, or a homeowner could have destroyed her and her transmitter… we’ll just never know for sure.

Over Thursday and Friday, I completed surgeries on six of the animals. Males 36 and 37 remained inaccessible inside their respective logs on Thursday but Friday dawned clear and sunny and my hopes of capturing them was high. After a couple early surgeries to allow things to warm up outside, I went out again to look for them – and it became apparent why they were hidden and not moving.

Male 46’s transmitter removal surgery on 14 April 2018. Denise Garland Photo

As I approached the log where Male 36 had been sheltered, a smaller chocolate brown unmarked (not previously captured) female rattlesnake was coiled in the sun at the open end of the log. Using a mirror to reflect sunlight into the log, I could see Male 36 coiled in the shadow behind the female. Now things became clear… Male 36 was not moving around because he had already found a female and was hanging out with her! I had an idea: I gently lifted the female away from the log and moved her a hundred feet or so away. Within a few minutes, Male 36 was sniffing around where she had been laying. Ten minutes later, enough of him was protruding from the log for me to capture him. One down and one to go!

The sun was also shining on the log where Male 37 had been. But this time I found Male 37 outside the log, on top of and courting another unmarked female. I captured him and, after a pang of guilt, took his female too.

By the end of a long day Saturday that included the last five surgeries, all the transmitters had been successfully removed, nine rattlesnakes had been released and our equipment was repacked for the drive home. Males 36 and 37 were the last two surgeries Saturday night and needed to recover overnight before release.

So, on our way out of town early the next morning, we released the two males. Male 36 glided back into the same log where I had captured him; I saw no sign of the female I had moved. Finally, I released Male 37 into his hollow log followed by the female he had been courting.

My last act was to leave my EYNC keys behind in an envelope, turn out the lights and lock the door. The field work is done but much data analysis, DNA analysis and writing remains. I will be forever grateful for the support and encouragement of many people and several organizations.

Acknowledgements

Recently retired EYNC Executive Director Paul Tebbel initially invited me to study rattlesnakes at EYNC. Over the past four-plus years, Paul and the entire staff and cadre of volunteers at the Nature Center were encouraging, supportive and genuinely interested in what I was doing. Torey, the new ED, has been wonderful, as well. The ARNHA board of directors consented to my study, trusted me that it could be done safely, and several board members took a personal interest in my work. Mary Maret, Resource Specialist for Sacramento County Regional Parks, facilitated the necessary county permits and was personally very supportive. Laura Patterson at California Department of Fish and Wildlife expertly managed issuance of my Scientific Collecting Permits. Rulon Clark added me to his laboratory group at San Diego State University as an adjunct researcher, allowing my field work to be approved by SDSU’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee – an essential detail needed to publish results in reputable scientific journals. Finally, Fred Andreka and Holohil Systems have been providing me with small dependable surgically-implantable radio transmitters for nearly twenty years and Holohil’s John Edwards has provided amazing customer service.

Thank you to everyone, including the countless EYNC visitors who stopped to talk and ask questions on the trails, many of whom seemed to walk away with an altered opinion of rattlesnakes!

Year end wrap-up

Well, it has been more than two months since I reported the first births of the year among the wild rattlesnakes in the Effie Yeaw Nature Center preserve. And while my hectic fall schedule prevented me from investing as much time as usual, I was able to record enough detail to compare this season’s behavior to previous years.

If the timing of the first births among our telemetered females (between 8 and 12 September) were representative of the larger population, we would expect to start encountering youngsters about the third week in September. Remember, new kids remain with their mothers in their birth shelters until their first shed, which usually occurs a little over a week after birth. Only then do they venture out into the world where people might encounter them.

Sure enough, the first young-of-the-year was encountered on 26 September, ironically on the sidewalk just outside the EYNC classroom as my UC California Naturalist class was leaving that evening. Of course, since I had just talked about baby rattlesnakes in class a few minutes before, the students were suspicious that I might have planted the little guy! The next day, I encountered another one (see photo below) stretched out next to the hollow log where Females 39 and 53 had recently given birth.

Young-of-the-year on 27 September, beside the hollow log where he was probably born.

Two shed “skins” (actually, just the outer or “corneal” layer) left by babies as they embark on their hazardous new life. Few survive to adulthood; at the size of pencils, they have lots of predators.

And sure enough, Female 39 once again made a beeline from her birth shelter to the blackberry thicket across San Lorenzo Way as soon as her kids’ natal sheds were complete (photo below). She has produced broods in three of the last four years and she has followed the same pattern each time: she used the same gestation/birth shelter, she made a direct 200+ meter move to hunt in the same blackberry thicket as soon as her kids departed, then she returned directly to her usual hibernation site after several weeks of foraging among the blackberries. Some of these individual rattlesnakes have proven to be quite predictable from one season to the next… but not all of them.

A slender postpartum Female 39, cryptically basking on the other side of San Lorenzo Way.

Female 41 spent the past three winters apparently by herself (as far as I could determine) in a ground squirrel burrow among the roots of a large living Valley Oak. However, she has apparently decided to spend this winter under the EYNC Visitor Center building! Now before getting excited, remember that she is one of only twelve rattlesnakes carrying radio transmitters at EYNC – and we have estimated that there are about 100 additional adult rattlesnakes in the preserve. We can make that assessment because we have 52 rattlesnakes marked with paint in the rattles that are not implanted with radios… and about half of our chance encounters with rattlesnakes without radios over the past year have been with unmarked animals.

Almost none of the EYNC staff or regular long-term visitors with whom I have spoken thought there were anywhere near that many rattlesnakes in the preserve. That’s a testament to just how secretive and non-aggressive rattlesnakes really are. It is highly likely that other rattlesnakes over-winter under the Visitor Center every year undetected.

It is simply prudent in rattlesnake country to be careful where you step and where you put your hands; simply look before you step or reach. Assume that a rattlesnake could be encountered anywhere – in any shed or under any wheelbarrow – and proceed with reasonable caution, not fear. Don’t walk around outside at night without a flashlight (or boots); while usually pretty timid, rattlesnakes really dislike being stepped on! That’s the same advice I have given countless people at my rattlesnake presentations.

As of 7 November, all but three of the telemetered rattlesnakes had returned to their previous hibernacula (hibernation shelters): exceptions are Female 41, who is under the Visitor Center 185 meters (a little over 600 feet) from her usual hibernaculum in the woods, Male 46 is on the hillside below the residential area instead of 265 m (about 870′) away under his usual log in the meadow, and Female 66 is under a new log 80 m (about 260′) from her usual log near the study pond.

The study comes to an end

As some of you know, 2017 will be my last year of data collection at Effie Yeaw Nature Center. We implanted the first transmitter in an EYNC rattlesnake in May 2014 and built up the group of telemetered rattlesnakes that summer. As a result, we have good data from three complete seasons during 2015, 2016 and 2017, plus many valuable observations from 2014. I will remove the transmitters from the remaining rattlesnakes in the spring and release them. Several are carrying their fourth transmitter (they must be replaced annually), so removal will be their fifth surgery. I also have blood samples in my refrigerator from nearly 70 wild EYNC rattlesnakes, as well as many dozens of shed skins collected from various locations in the preserve… and DNA can be extracted from both blood and shed skins.

Now the real work begins. Field work is great fun! Sitting at a computer for weeks or months is, of course, far less entertaining. Yet the field work means nothing if the data are not analyzed and shared. And as a favorite mentor of mine is fond of reminding me, “If you don’t publish it, it never happened!” So, while we certainly have answers to the original questions (like how many rattlesnakes are there, where do they give birth, spend the winter, etc.), the most exciting part involves the potential for unexpected discoveries. And as I have written about in this blog before, I have found the EYNC rattlesnakes associating in three loose groups without an obvious environmental reason to do so. I suspect they are socializing in family groups, which has only been documented in one previous case with Timber Rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus) in the Appalachian Mountains. Genetic analysis of the blood and shed skins will make or break that hypothesis for the EYNC animals. I will continue to post analysis updates and eventually publications here.

So stay tuned!

I’ll leave you with one of my very favorite photos from the study: big Male 37 basking peacefully on top of a large pile of dead branches among blackberry and wild grape vines early one morning in April 2016. The third rattlesnake to receive a transmitter at EYNC, he has always been a joy to watch and has provided some of my most memorable rattlesnake encounters of the last four years. The yellow and red paint in his rattle is slightly visible in the photo. Like others of his kind, he wants nothing to do with people but is a mouse, vole or ground squirrel’s worst nightmare.

Where are the rattlesnakes?

Well, it’s March and many recent days have been sunny and quite warm. Even though daytime highs have been listed in the 50s, that’s measured in shade and the temperature in the sun near the ground is always considerably warmer. So why were rattlesnakes basking in good numbers by late February last year but not yet this year?

There are two parts to the answer. First, most of the snakes spend the winter deep enough underground that they are insulated from daily temperature fluctuations. In other words, they do not feel daytime highs or nightime lows. Deep in their winter shelters, the temperature creeps up or down gradually in response to the mean (average) outside temperature. The second part of the answer is that natural selection tends to remove animals from the gene pool that don’t spend the winter deep enough and/or that venture out too early and get caught in freezing weather. The animals that select optimal winter shelters tend to live longer, and thus produce more offspring carrying the genes for those successful behaviors. (For those of you interested in the evidence for genetic influence on behavior, Time Love and Memory (2000) by Pulitzer Prize winning author Jonathan Weiner is an entertaining and astonishing summary, written in easy-to-understand language but with references to the scholarly research.)

So how do we know the temperature in the underground shelters?

Besides having recorded hourly temperatures for nearly four years with a data logger in a burrow 1 meter (39″) below ground in the Mohave Desert during a previous study, we can routinely calculate body temperatures of the hibernating snakes from the pulse interval of their transmitters during the winter.

The transmitters come from the manufacturer (Holohil Systems Ltd.; www.holohil.com) with a calibration graph showing the correlation between pulse rate and temperature for each transmitter (they vary slightly).

A standard conversion graph supplied by the transmitter manufacturer, Holohil Systems. Put simply, the transmitters beep faster when warm and slower when cool and at a predictable rate.

I routinely check the pulse rate in a water bath at room temperature before implanting a transmitter and adjust the mathematical conversion, if it differs slightly from the factory data. Then it is a simple matter in the field to time the pulse interval with a stopwatch and convert that measurement to temperature later. And since the transmitter is implanted inside the snake’s abdominal cavity, transmitter temperature equals core body temperature.

I also record hourly shade air temperatures with a data logger in the nature preserve at Effie Yeaw Nature Center. This gives me a standard local reference against which to compare rattlesnake behavior and look for correlations with weather conditions.

My data logger is located on the north side of a large cottonwood tree near the center of the EYNC nature preserve where it is never exposed to direct sunlight.

I can then compare rattlesnake behavior, body temperatures and air temperatures. This is especially interesting when one year is compared to another.

Some early temperature data for 2017. Note that the daily mean air temperatures vary greatly, depending on weather conditions, while the mean rattlesnake body temperatures tend to be *nestled within the fluctuating air temps*. These snakes were still underground and not affected by daily high and low temperatures outside.

You can see about six weeks’ data from this year in the chart above. The fluctuations in mean (average) air temperature (open circles) reflect the daily changes based on cloudy verses sunny days and cold air masses moving through verses warmer southern air (the same factors discussed every day by meteorologists). The five filled circles are the mean body temperatures of the twelve telemetered rattlesnakes on the days that I recorded their data. There are more air temperature records because the data logger records automatically around the clock while rattlesnake body temperatures are only recorded when I visit the study site (which I do less frequently when the animals are inactive).

Now take a look at the corresponding data from last year:

Early temperature data for 2016. In these data, you will see that mean body temperatures are not buried among the mean daily temperatures. Rather, especially by the middle of February, the mean body temperatures greatly exceed the mean air temperatures. That’s because the animals were out of their shelters and basking in the sun.

Checking my behavioral observations from last year, I find a few rattlesnakes were starting to bask occasionally by the end of January and most were basking regularly on sunny days by the end of February. Regular basking continued through mid-March. Then, suddenly, between 17 and 19 March, most of the rattlesnakes left their hibernation shelters, as if someone had given them the “all clear” signal. This was multiple rattlesnakes leaving multiple shelters at the same time – pretty amazing! By the way, you may also notice that I visited and recorded data more frequently in February last year. That’s because there were rattlesnakes to see and behavior to record (besides the science; it’s just more fun when there are rattlesnakes to see!).

If I combine the raw data from 2016 and 2017 for comparison, the chart gets pretty messy and trends are hard to make out. But we can create mathematical models for those same data that present a much clearer picture.

These are mathematical models derived from the data in the two charts above. Note the difference between the temperatures of the basking rattlesnakes in 2016, compared to 2017 where the snakes were still underground and their body temperatures were “chasing” the changing environmental temperature, first rising in late January, then leveling off as the weather started to cool, and finally declining as the weather turned cold again in late February.

You can see that mean February air temperatures started out much lower this year compared to 2016. And, in 2016, with mean air temperatures exceeding 50F by early February and staying there, the rattlesnakes began to bask and their body temps took off as a result. This year, air temps started nearly ten degrees lower, rose briefly, but then took a nosedive in late February, keeping the rattlesnakes cool and underground so far.

Of course, some individuals do not behave in the same manner as most others. I have heard some reports of a few rattlesnakes being sighted in the past few weeks and one dog reportedly bitten already. While none of the telemetered rattlesnakes at Effie Yeaw have emerged from hibernation yet, one rattlesnake without a radio has been basking early – just as he has done each of the past two years. My old skinny Male 40 has been frequently laying in the sun at the entrance to his winter shelter for more than a week.

Male 40 basking in the late morning of 2 March 2017. Rattlesnakes, like other animals, have individual idiosyncrasies, and this animal has been the first to emerge and bask three years in a row. Interestingly, he is typically the last to leave the winter shelter and the first to return in the fall.

As you may recall, Male 40 was implanted with a transmitter in 2014 but I removed his second radio last spring and released him without one because he was not producing useful behavioral data. It was not that he was just behaving differently than the others (after all, unusual behavior is interesting and valuable to record), he has been chronically and significantly underweight, appears to be quite old, moves very little during the summer, and has never been found courting a female. Given his poor body condition, I was afraid that he would die during hibernation and his transmitter would not be retrievable. But, even without a radio, he continues to be sighted regularly and has now made it through another winter.

But most others seem to be waiting for some sustained warmer weather before venturing out.

Male 36 finally recaptured!

If you have been following my rattlesnake study from the beginning, you know that we struggled through some faulty transmitters early in the project (search “failed transmitters” for previous info). The first six transmitters I implanted failed early. Several failed during hibernation (2014/15) and, because I knew where the snakes spent the winter, I was able to capture them when they began basking in the spring. Two, however, proved to be a bigger problem.

Male 36’s transmitter was first to fail in September 2014, with two months of activity remaining that season. Male 37’s transmitter lasted into the winter but he hibernated high on the bluff under a thick mat of vegetation, making his exact location very difficult to visit and impossible to pinpoint. Thus, both emerged in the spring of 2015 without functioning transmitters.

Both eluded recapture until October 2015, when I found Male 37 (details here) under the log I call “The Community Center” because everybody visits it from time to time. Males visit looking for girls, pregnant females hang out there to thermoregulate and give birth, and both sexes use it for shelter while waiting to shed (but nobody spends the winter there). I replaced Male 37’s transmitter then, leaving only Male 36 unaccounted for – until last week.

After twenty months, I had just about given up on finding Male 36 again. But when I checked around The Community Center one day last week, I was thrilled to spot his rattle with red/red paint! Like Male 37 last fall, Male 36 was also pre-shed and using The Community Center for shelter while he waited to complete the process.

Pre-shed Male 36, with failed transmitter, at Refuge 01, Effie Yeaw Nature Center, on 11 May 2016, moments before his recapture. Original RAW IMG_1531.CR2 — Pre-shed Male 36, with failed transmitter, at The Community Center on 11 May 2016, moments before his recapture. If you look closely (partly obscured by grass), you can make out the new light-colored rattle segment forming under the skin at the rattle base.

Just like Male 37, I captured Male 36 and kept him several days until he shed. His transmitter was replaced and he was released yesterday.

Male 36 disappearing into The Community Center yesterday with a new transmitter and re-marked rattle (his rattle is quite long and likely to break soon, potentially taking his original paint with it). Note how clean and crisp his pattern appears after shedding, compared to the photo above.

The return of Male 36 fills my permit quota of seven telemetered males. We currently have five females telemetered and I am holding out, hoping to get a couple of females radio-tagged farther out in the northeastern portion of the preserve where few of our current snakes venture. Interestingly, Male 38 was hanging around with two females out there last week, including last Saturday when I was hosting a video crew from UC Santa Cruz. While I would have loved to get a transmitter into one of them, they were too wary and repeatedly escaped when approached.

I wish more people could see just how hard these fascinating creatures try to avoid confrontations with people!

Interesting rattlesnake news

How well do rattlesnakes tolerate surgically-implanted transmitters?

As I have discussed before, there is a long (20+ years) history of telemetry studies of rattlesnakes in which individual animals tolerate the transmitters for years, enduring periodic surgeries to replace the radios. The animals thrive, repeatedly producing offspring and growing at the same rate as rattlesnakes without transmitters.

I bring this up because of a phone call last weekend from the landowner where I conducted my El Dorado County field study. He had just encountered the first Northern Pacific Rattlesnake I ever marked and telemetered, still identifiable by the yellow-over-yellow paint remaining in his rattle. He is now an exceptionally large male with twelve rattle segments – but in 2009, he was a young animal with a tapered unbroken rattle. He eventually endured four annual surgeries to implant and replace transmitters, followed by a fifth surgery in 2013 to remove his last radio.

Here is a PowerPoint slide of Male 01 — Here is a PowerPoint slide I use to illustrate how marking the rattles helps to judge growth and shedding frequency. The photos are of my Male #1. It also demonstrates how the rattle breaks over time. According to my friend, the 2011 paint is now just two segments from being lost but the snake is big, healthy, and thriving. You can see that, once the early tapered segments are gone, the rattle offers little insight into the age of the snake.

Male 01 being sighted alive and healthy is just more evidence that the surgical protocol and other study methods used by me and many of my rattlesnake-researcher colleagues is well tolerated by the animals we seek to learn more about.

Rattlesnake intelligence?

Despite my frequent admonition that we often tend to give rattlesnakes and similar animals too much credit for cognitive thought, friends at San Diego State University recently published some compelling evidence that rattlesnakes may learn from experience and apply those lessons to anticipate and mitigate problems during future similar circumstances. Bree Putman and Rulon Clark have spent years studying rattlesnake predation tactics by setting up video cameras on hunting rattlesnakes and recording their predatory encounters with small mammals. (This works because rattlesnakes are ambush hunters that sit still for long periods of time, waiting for prey to wander by.)

While reviewing 2000 hours of video, Bree and Rulon discovered two examples of rattlesnakes using their heads and necks to move foliage out of the way that might otherwise interfere with a strike when prey wanders close (click here for video). The animals involved were Northern Pacific Rattlesnakes – the same species as we have in the Sacramento area. Similar behavior has been reported a couple of times in the past, once involving a Prairie Rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis) and once involving an Arizona Blacktail Rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus); both these incidents were witnessed by observers but not recorded.

Thus, evidence continues to accumulate that rattlesnakes are likely more social and maybe more intelligent than previously thought – although many habits are undoubtedly genetically programmed by natural selection. The new report by Putman and Clark is contained in the current issue of The Southwestern Naturalist (volume 60, number 4; December 2015).

For more interesting videos of natural predatory behavior by rattlesnakes, go to Rulon’s YouTube page.