1. What is a Rattlesnake?	My Poem
2.Where does it live?
3.How does it protect itself?
4.Animal babies and its family
5.What does it eat?
6. How can it help our environment

Rattlesnakes are very interesting. This is the reason I chose this animal. Rattlesnakes are reptiles. They live in dry, hot deserts of the South and Western United States and Mexico. In the winter, the desert is cold , so they make a den underground and hibernate.

The rattlesnake belongs to a scientific family called Viperdae. The division of the family they belong with is the pit viper. Rattlesnakes bodies are dry with bare scales at the end of their tails. They can grow in size from two feet to eight feet long. At the end of its body is a tail that has a rattle. The rattle shakes when an enemy is nearby. A rattlesnake has eyes but no eyelids. They have no ears, but uses ground vibrations to know when an enemy is near. They have a flexible hinged jaw that has a pair of hollow venom filled fangs. The venom is made in the glands behind the fangs.

This venom is poisonous. A rattlesnake uses its tongue to touch and feel. They also have two holes in the snout between the eyes and nostrils. These are heat-sensitive pits , used to find prey by detecting body heat. Their bodies have a heart , liver, kidneys, lung, stomach and intestines.

Rattlesnakes have a mother and a father. Baby rattlesnakes are developed in egg sacs, inside their mother. After twelve weeks, they are born into the world in their transparent sac. Each baby has an egg tooth to cut a slit in the sac to escape. There can be six to fifty babies born at the same time. The babies look after themselves. They are the size of a pencil. They eat earthworms , flies, grasshoppers, ants, and insects. They have fangs and poison from the time they are born. The first year of life is dangerous for small snakes. They are sometimes eaten by birds, raccoons, and rats, but when the snakes are bigger, these are some of the animals the snake will eat.

Rattlesnakes eat rabbits and gophers. They also eat mice and lizards. They eat their prey whole and it takes sometimes days or months to digest.

The Rattlesnake best helps the environment and man by eating animals and insect pests. They help save farm crops by eating gophers and rats. Small baby snakes eat insects that destroy crops. This doesn't protect the rattlesnake because more men are afraid of it and somehow feel safer if a rattlesnake is dead. they should just try to understand the rattlesnake as an interesting animal that is needed in our world.