The Sidewinder is a species, Crotalus cerastes, of rattlesnake, found in the US's southwestern states and adapted to desert habitats.
It is named for its unusual form of locomotion across hot desert sands: sidewinding consists of shaping its body into a kind of flattened, horizontally-rotating helix, so that it moves sideways across the sand with only two points touching ground at any moment, thus reducing its body's exposure to heat.
It is a pit viper, using its sensory pits to detect potential prey.
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