Nocturnal Wildlife's Sensory Superpowers 

There’s an important part of the San Diego Zoo Safari Park that most guests never see.

SAN DIEGO (Jan. 30, 2024) – San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and San Diego State University (SDSU) are joining forces to usher in a new way of studying snakes. In a collaboration between San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and Rulon Clark, Ph.D., professor of biology at SDSU, biologists are tagging wild rattlesnakes with external transmitters and accelerometers. Previously, telemetry devices on snakes had to be surgically implanted—severely limiting this area of study. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and SDSU are among the first to use acceleration technology to study snakes.

Rattlesnakes are important to habitat health, but there’s still much to learn about their behavior and ecological role.