Houston Zoo 2017 with the Bigger Cahoona - Rattler #1

Mean looking critters, these rattlesnakes.  Fascinating, though - engineered to perfection for what they do.  In this post almost exactly a year ago I wrote of someone we met through my son's Cub Scout pack, a bona-fide herpetologist who did some bona-fide research on rattlers.  They would fire a relatively slow-moving .45 caliber slug that would pass them at an oblique angle.  The snakes were so quick and their heat sensors so sensitive that they would actually strike at the bullet, popping their own heads off in the process!