Project RattleCam

This project was conceived in 2020 when Dr. Scott Boback of Dickinson College and Dr. Emily Taylor of the California Polytechnic State University decided to design a Zooniverse project for help analyzing game camera images they've been collecting from prairie rattlesnake rookeries in a remote area of Colorado. Rattlesnake rookeries are areas where females come together to give birth and care for their young. Along with their university students, the team has been studying rattlesnakes in this population for a few years, and it has become clear that these rookeries combined with modern game camera technology provide a unique opportunity to learn about rattlesnake social behavior. It is really difficult to reach areas where rattlesnakes aggregate like this, both logistically and physically, so our project has the added bonus of making this footage accessible to people from around the world.

We placed cameras at Prairie Rattlesnake rookeries and took photos every 5 minutes. We need your help in looking at these images and telling us whether snakes are present in each image, if so how many adult and/or baby snakes are present, and what they are doing. We will use the results to study their social behavior, how they obtain water, identify their predators, and more.