Because snakes have such an unfair reputation, most people see them as just deadly, legless pests that you should avoid at all costs. That paradigm has shifted a little bit, and more people are warming up and realizing how misunderstood they are.
But there’s a lot more to snakes that most folks haven’t delved into yet.
Ever wonder what makes a rattlesnake, well, rattle?
Rattlesnakes can’t be mistaken for anything else. If you don’t immediately see the rattle on their tails, you’ll sure as heck hear it.
A desert isn’t complete if it doesn’t have cacti and a rattlesnake somewhere. But have you really thought about the inner workings of this iconic, rattling reptile?
Well, a father and son duo on YouTube couldn’t quite get the rattlesnake’s rattle out of their heads.
They wanted to take a look inside and see what it was made of.
Courtesy of the channel What’s Inside? hosted by father and son Dan and Lincoln, we get to watch them order a rattlesnake tail in the mail.
The rattle is in pretty good shape and is attached to a good, long strip of the snake’s skin.
Judging from the look of it, it’s possible the rattle was taken from a cleanly dissected rattlesnake body.
And there’s more dissection coming up soon. They plan to use a cutter to look even deeper into this specimen.
Lincoln is surprised at the texture of the rattle.
Definitely not what he expected. But they put aside their “yuck” feelings in the pursuit of science, and so prepare the thing for cutting.
After Dan cuts into the rattle with a cutter, the secret is revealed.
The rattle proves difficult to cut for Dan. That’s because rattlesnake rattles are made of tough keratin – the same stuff that makes up your hair and nails.
Keratin, when compact and developed like this, can be super tough.
It’s also the same thing that reptile scales are made of. Those armor scutes on a crocodile’s back? Those are covered in keratin. Keratin also forms the sheath on claws as well as beaks.
I think I’ve made the point pretty well: keratin is really tough. You can see Dan struggling to cut through it with a box cutter here.
And that keratin forms what are called “buttons”, those being the kernel-shaped segments on the rattle.
A newborn rattlesnake will have just one button, and the snake develops more each time it sheds.
Snakes will shed anywhere from 4 to 12 times a year. Rattlesnakes have lifespans of 16-22 years, so that’s plenty of shed cycles.
That’s how the rattle comes to be.
The segments hit against each other at 50 times per second thanks to the powerful muscles in the snake’s tail.
Lincoln tries to shake the rattle at the same speed and hilariously fails to do so. Well, he’s no rattlesnake.
Now you know what makes the rattlesnake rattle! Who could’ve guessed that so much complexity was in one simple structure?
Watch the video below to see Dan and Lincoln cutting it open!
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