Desert Horned Viper info.

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The Desert Horned Viper
(Cerastes cerastes)

General Information:

The Desert Horned Viper lives in the desert. They usually bury themselves in the sand in order to keep cool in the desert heat. They overwinter in the borrowed burrows of rodents or burrowing lizards.

They usually move with their bodies in front of their heads in order to keep the sun out of their faces, using their bodies as a wall. They normally hunt during the night. They received their name because of the two horns that stick out of the top of their heads.

Horned vipers are egg-layers. Mating takes place from April to June, and the female will lay and 12-20 eggs in damp soil. The eggs incubate for about 8 weeks and then hatch. The young snakes become sexually mature in about two years. Captive specimens of this snake can live as long as 18 years.

Distinctive Features:

The Desert Horned Viper ranks as the most abundant and distinctive venomous snake within its range:

• Size and shape: Typically just under two feet in length, robust and cylindrically depressed body, narrow neck, thick midsection, tapering tail.

• Head: Broad, flat and round-snouted, with center-ridged (or keeled) scales; forward-set moderately large eyes with vertical pupils (much like those of the Southwestern rattlesnakes); distinctive supraorbital horns (which may not always be present in all populations or even individuals); hinged hollow fangs that snap into a biting position when the snake opens its mouth.

• Color and pattern: Yellowish, brownish, reddish to grayish colors, often matching the color of the surface of the soil; darker and more or less rectangular patches along the back.

Range and Habitat:
The snake’s range essentially spans the Sahara Desert, from Morocco and Mauritania on the western side of the African continent to Egypt and Sudan on the eastern side. It also occurs in the southern reaches of the Arabian Peninsula. It prefers drier areas with finer and looser sands and occasional rock outcrops, especially at higher elevations with less harsh desert temperatures.

Diet:
The Desert Horned Viper like all snakes, a meat eater – preys primarily on lizards but also on mammals and birds that inhabit its arid environment. It often lies in ambush, just beneath the sand with only its horns and eyes exposed, poised to explode from its cover and strike its victim with stunning swiftness.

Behavior and Life Cycle:

Most active at night, the snake spends its days sequestered in the sand or in abandoned burrows or beneath rocky outcrops.
As it moves across the fine, loose sand of its habitat, the snake travels by “sidewinding,” or sliding sideways, much like the Sidewinder Rattlesnake of the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts of the American Southwest. In its sidewinding journey, the snake looks something like a rolling spring and faces at an angle to its actual direction of travel: it appears to be headed in one direction while it is actually going in another.
It buries itself by shimmying its body into the fine loose sand, which it uses not only as a cover for ambushing prey and protection from the midday sun but also as its setting for copulation.
After mating, in the spring of the year, the female lays roughly a dozen to two dozen eggs in abandoned rodent burrows or beneath rock ledges. Once she lays her eggs, they hatch after 50 to 80 days of incubation. The new hatchlings will average four to six inches in length. They become sexually mature in about two years. They may live for 10 to 15 years or more.

Life's Hazard:
Although its desert ranges rank among the world’s more harsh environments, the Desert Horned Viper has managed to sustain its numbers. As a species, it is not threatened. Among its enemies, however, are the large predatory birds and the Sand Cat (a small desert-adapted wild cat).
If threatened, the snake can produce a rasping warning sound, which it generates by rubbing together the obliquely-angled, saw-toothed scales along its flanks.

The Bite, the Venom, the Consequences:

The Desert Horned Viper can deliver a bite that (not usually fatal) can have serious consequences. The venom, according to a report published in the Oxford Journal of Medicine, has more than 13 different toxins—a witch’s brew of poisons that may vary in mix by geographical location within the reptile’s range. It causes conditions such as massive local swelling, acute pain, excessive bleeding (or clotting, depending on the blend of toxins), nausea, abdominal pain, sweating, exhaustion, kidney failure and heart irregularities. (Reportedly, the snake took a toll on French Foreign Legionnaires when those troopers occupied Algeria).

Close Relatives:
According to the Oxford Journal of Medicine, C. cerastes has two close relatives. One, the horned and similar-sized C. gasperettii, occupies a range extending from southern Israel eastward across Iraq into eastern Iran. The other, the hornless and much smaller C. vipera, shares much of the same range occupied by C. cerastes.




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