The Americas: Diving Into How Rattlesnake Scales Help Them Gather Water
On The Americas, you can see some of the most incredible feats of nature up close and personal.
The new nature documentary series The Americas takes viewers on an epic 10-part journey across a vast supercontinent. Traveling from southernmost Chile to the freezing landscapes of Alaska and Canada, the series explores the most incredible places in the Americas and the creatures who live there.
In Episode 3, we visit the “The Wild West,” a land featuring lush prairies, bone dry desserts, the stunning natural beauty of Yellowstone, and the vast Rocky Mountains. Nestled in the unforgiving Colorado mountaintops, filmmakers encountered a prairie rattlesnake with a lifesaving superpower and a breathtaking capacity for parental sacrifice.
The Americas highlights the amazing superpowers of prairie rattlesnakes
In the Colorado mountains, winter takes a full 8 months to play out, lingering into May. When spring finally does return, rattlesnakes emerge from their subterranean dens by the thousands to hunt. They’ve spent the entire winter hiding out underground where there’s no food to speak of, and they’re hungry.
As the snakes spread out in search of food, filmmakers focused in on one snake who stayed behind. She’s pregnant and vulnerable, so she’s foregoing the short-lived springtime bounty in favor of safety. Staying near the den will give her young the best chance to survive, but she’s already starving and thirsty, with only the reserves from the previous summer to sustain her.
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She barely moves during the 3-month gestation period, conserving all of her energy for the task at hand. She’ll survive and grow her babies on the energy stores she saved up the year before, but she needs water to survive. And she’s got a neat little trick for getting it.
During spring and early fall, the high peaks of the Colorado mountains receive approximately 2 millimeters of rainfall per month. Available fresh water is hard to come by so rattlesnakes have figured out how to make the best of infrequent rains. When it rains, rattlesnakes flatten themselves out and coil their bodies to maximize surface area.
When water droplets strike the rattlesnake, it clings to their scales like tennis balls on a wall of Velcro. It’s the unique nanotexture of the scales, a shallow maze of miniature channels, which makes the scales both sticky and hydrophobic. When the rattlesnake needs a drink, it can slurp water directly from the surface of its body. When rattlesnakes are together in groups, they’ve even been known to share water, taking sips from one another’s bodies. This special evolutionary trick lets rattlesnakes get the water they need without needing to seek it out, which is the only way they can get through the taxing reproductive process.
After three months of gestation, it’s finally time for the next generation of prairie rattlesnakes to be born, and the adult snake hasn’t eaten for nearly a year. Unfortunately, by then the warm season has come to an end. The rattlesnake and her babies will spend the next 8 months safe in the den, waiting out the long winter. By the time spring comes again, it will have been 20 months since the rattlesnake had her last meal, but she will have succeeded in ensuring the Wild West remains populated with one of its most iconic species.
Where to Watch The Americas
The Americas debuted with a special two-part premiere on Sunday February 23, at 7:00 p.m. ET. Viewers were treated to a documentary double feature two weeks in a row, following a schedule change. Future episodes will air weekly on Sundays at 8:00 pm ET and will be streaming on Peacock the following day!
