http://vimeo.com/182386219
Follow Skeate, Arwen, Hermione and Mr. Darcy, among others — radiotagged timber rattlesnakes living in southeast Ohio woods — on the @TimberTweets Twitter feed by CFAES’s Peterman Lab. Lab staff are tracking the secretive snakes, an Ohio endangered species, to see how forest management affects them. Venomous but shy, with a taste for eating small rodents (including ones spreading Lyme disease), timber rattlers help ecosystems and, quietly, people.
Lab head Bill Peterman, assistant professor in CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, says, “I’ve had a passion for amphibians and reptiles since I was a kid catching frogs and snakes.” He’s in the video above.