Special Features:
- Copperheads will attempt to warn off predators by shaking their tails and imitating a rattlesnake.
- Although bites are not as toxic as a rattlesnake's, they are extremely painful.
- Copperheads have a heat sensitive pit located between the eye and the nostril on each side of the head that they use to detect warm-blooded prey.
- They don't actively hunt, but lay in wait for prey.
- They have hollow, curved, retractable fangs that are normally folded back along the jaw but as the snake opens its mouth to strike the fangs spring forward into position.
- There is a series of 5-7 replacement fangs in the gums behind the current fangs.
- Males have longer tails than females, but the females have a longer length.
Social Structure & Behavior:
They tend to live in communal dens. These snakes hibernate during winter.
Although they are land snakes, they have been seen voluntarily entering water and swimming. They are diurnal in the spring and fall, and nocturnal in the summer.
Primarily ambushers, the Copperheads will inject venom into their prey and then track them down after they die. Smaller prey are held in their mouth until they die.
Reproduction:
Sexual maturity is 4 years old or about 2 feet long. Males seek out sexually active females using their tongue to detect pheromones in the air.
Females that breed in autumn store the sperm until after emerging from a hibernating site.
Gestation is 3-9 months. Females are ovoviviparous (eggs develop in the body of the female and hatch within or immediately after being expelled).
Females do not nurture their young.
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