An intimate new livestream is giving scientists a closer look into the lives of rattlesnakes, which are historically challenging to study. Positioned to face a massive "mega-den" filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of prairie rattlesnakes wedged between rocks somewhere in northern Colorado, the stream is available to watch on YouTube so interested members of the public can observe the creatures themselves, too, and even contribute to the research effort.
The Colorado livestream is part of a community science initiative called Project Rattle Cam that aims to collect real-time data on a normally enigmatic species of venomous reptile. Rattlesnakes are found almost everywhere in the continental United States, the National Wildlife Federation writes, but experts often note how researching them is difficult for several reasons, including their rugged habitats and secretive behavior.
Project Rattle Cam launched the latest livestream with funding from donors and technology designed by faculty and technicians at California Polytechnic State University's Bailey College of Science and Mathematics, the university said. It overlooks a massive den in a remote part of northern Colorado. The exact location has not been revealed, but Cal Poly said it is on private land.
The live feed is an upgrade from Project Rattle Cam's earlier means to involve interested people on the internet in a study of rattlesnakes in the American West, which shared time-lapse photographs from certain congregation sites online.
"This livestream allows us to collect data on wild rattlesnakes without disturbing them, facilitating unbiased scientific discovery," said Emily Taylor, a biological sciences professor at Cal Poly who leads Project Rattle Cam, in a statement. "But even more important is that members of the public can watch wild rattlesnakes behaving as they naturally do, helping to combat the biased imagery we see on television shows of rattling, defensive and stressed snakes interacting with people who are provoking them."
People watching the stream can tune in at any time to see the creatures as they exist in their day-to-day: piled atop one another, basking in the sun, drinking rain water, shedding their skin, interacting in other ways and sometimes receiving visitors, like small rodents attempting to attack. Dozens of rattlesnakes in the mega-den are currently pregnant, according to Cal Poly, so viewers should also be able to watch the snakes begin to rear their young later this summer. Researchers said the best times to check out the live feed are in the morning or early evening, and community observations are always welcome in the YouTube feed's accompanying live chat.
Project Rattle Cam operates another livestream that tracks a smaller western rattlesnake den along the central coast of California. For the last three years, that feed has observed the den during warmer seasons, when the snakes emerge from their shelter, Cal Poly said. That stream is also set up at an undisclosed location and went live again on July 11.
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