sczlogover.gif (3787 bytes)

© Sedgwick County Zoo, credit: Bill Chambers

Aruba Island Rattlesnake

Crotalus unicolor

Physical Characteristics

  • This heavy-bodied pit viper can be a variety of colors ranging from white to apricot, or brown to slate blue. Its skin looks like it has been dusted with powder. There are diamond-shaped markings from the head to the tail.
  • Size of average adult
    • length: usually less than 30 inches

Diet

  • Wild: small rodents, birds and whip-tail lizards

Behavior

  • Kill prey with venom but enzymes start to digest it before the snake starts to eat.
  • Laid-back, will not attack unless provoked; has no natural predators.
  • Males fight for attention from females; inter-twine upper parts of bodies and attempt to push each other down
  • Reproduction
    • sexual maturity: male = 4 years, female = 5 years
    • gestation: 4 months
    • female bears 5-15 live young

Environmental/Global

  • Habitat: tropical desert areas
  • Distribution: Aruba Island in Caribbean Sea (off coast of Venezuela)
  • Numbers: possibly only 230 in the wild
  • Status: Threatened (Endangered Species Act and Int. Union for Conserv. of Nature)
    • scientists believe that it is critically endangered
    • habitat destruction

Conservation Efforts

  • Now a part of Species Survival Plan to manage captive breeding

Research and Investigative Reports

  • Field research started in 1993
Click here to visit the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA). Click here to visit Sedgwick County, Kansas. COPYRIGHT 2004 Sedgwick County Zoo all rights reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording means or otherwise without prior written permission of the photographer or author. Unless marked otherwise, materials are from the Sedgwick County Zoo. Sedgwick County Zoo is accredited by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA).