Colorado Rattlesnake 'Mega Den' Bursting with Even More Snakes Following Weeks of Births

Project RattleCam started monitoring the Colorado den, home to hundreds of snakes, in May

It's baby shower season at Colorado's rattlesnake "mega den."

According to CBS News, Project RattleCam's livestream of a rattlesnake den in a craggy Colorado hillside home to hundreds of rattlesnakes has gotten even busier.

The reptiles are now in the late summer period when they typically give birth. Researchers monitoring the Colorado den's livestream — available to view on YouTube or RattleCam.org —have witnessed numerous new, young snakes slithering through shots.

Earlier this year, the California Polytechnic State University Bailey College of Science and Mathematics (Cal Poly) set up a high-tech solar-powered camera system to live stream the northern Colorado rattlesnake "mega-den" from May until October so researchers and animal lovers can observe the rattlesnakes. The exact location of the den is not available to the public to protect the rattlesnakes from curious trespassers.

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Now that young snakes are part of the picture, researchers and livestream viewers are seeing new rattlesnake behaviors.

"We regularly see what we like to call 'babysitting,' pregnant females that we can visibly see have not given birth, yet are kind of guarding the newborn snakes," Max Roberts, a CalPoly graduate student researcher, told CBS News, adding that rattlesnakes are one of the few reptiles that care for their young.

According to the researcher, adult snakes in the Colorado den offer body heat to the adolescent snakes to help the little snakes regulate their body temperature until it is time to enter hibernation in the fall.

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In a press release about the May launch of the live stream, Cal Poly noted that researchers set up the stream to learn more about rattlesnakes and to "combat the biased imagery we see on television shows of rattling, defensive, and stressed snakes interacting with people who are provoking them."

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Project Rattlecam, which also has a livestream set up at a snake den in California, is a collaboration between Cal Poly, snake removal company Central Coast Snake Services and Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

According to Cal Poly, the best time to tune in to the livestream for snake activity is in the early morning or late at night.

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