journal

i am awoken at 5:30 AM. “viv it’s time to go!!”

today is snake class!! snakes on a sunday. i have no time to shower, i speedrun getting dressed and brushing my teeth, brew my cofe, and get out the house because i have a class in joshua tree at 9:00 AM and it’s a long drive

it was pretty fun! i took lots of good notes. it was a lot like my animal taxonomy class that im taking at college but instead of an hour long lecture its a five hour long lecture about snakes, with a focus on desert snakes, with a focus focus on native mojave desert snakes, with a focus focus focus on native mojave rattlesnakes. we covered topics like venom composition over time and species, mating behaviours, feeding patterns and hunting behaviour, habitat usage, metabolism, that kind of stuff.

there was also a hiking section where we went out to look for guys but unfortunately following the trend of california being abnormally hot lately, it was way too hot to be able to find any guys where they’d be hanging out for us to see them so that was kind of a bust but not really because it was still really fun to be running around the desert for a bit. i took a lot of pictures of cacti!

there were also a bunch of guys in tanks in the room being used for the lecture so there were still live snakes to handle. comprehensive list of the fellas we had on hand were crotalus ruber, crotalus helleri, crotalus atrox, two crotalus mitchelli, crotalus cerastes, lampropeltis californiae, lichanura trivirgata, arizona elegans, crotalus scutulatus, and pituophis catenifer

i think the coolest thing i learned today was about how rattlesnakes specifically can collect extra water when it rains. they have hydrophobic, sticky skin with textures specifically adapted for this. most snakes can go their entire life without drinking because they can get all their water from their diet, but rattlesnakes when it rains they’ll flatten themselves into round pancakes and drink the water off their skin!!! i thought that was cool as frick

another thing is since there is so much male-male competition for females they will fight for dominance. most snakes will fight but sort of horizontal along the ground. viperidae twist themselves around eachother vertically and it almost looks like arm wrestling. this usually psychically destroys the loser enough that he gives up on females for a little bit. also often females wont have enough time to build up fat reserves between breeding seasons to go again so they will copulate and store the sperm until next season which seems wack to me.

and something i found really funny was how ground squirrels interact with rattlesnakes, having to do with rattlesnakes infrared perception. ground squirrels will flick their tail to taunt a lot of snakes in order to avoid predation, saying “hey hey look at me i’m too fast for you to catch!!!”. but when interacting with snakes that can sense IR, they will shoot extra blood into their tails to play with that ability. bastards!!!

anyways im home now and talking to my boyfriend in vc while writing this lifes good