Snake photos make the rounds on Internet

 

In the past several days, the photos have circulated across the High Desert and beyond, with writers forwarding the same photos, claiming the rattlers are in Phelan, Lucerne Valley, Rosamond, Palmdale, Lancaster and Beaumont.

The truth is the snakes are definitely rattlers. But they’re not Mojave Greens and the photos are not from anywhere in California, according to Mike Cardwell, a reptile expert who has studied Mojave Greens for years.

“(The photos) are really making the rounds on the Internet in Southern California,” wrote Cardwell, who spent three years studying Mojave Greens in the Victor Valley. “They are NOT Mojave rattlesnakes. They are prairie rattlesnakes, native to states like Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, west Texas, etc.”

In 2007, he published a study of “The reproductive ecology of Mojave rattlesnakes” in the Journal of Zoology.
To view the study, go to www.VVDailyPress.com.