Rattlesnakes are a group of venomous snakes of the genera Crotalus and Sistrurus of the subfamily Crotalinae ("pit vipers"). The 36 known species of rattlesnakes have between 65 and 70 subspecies, all native to the Americas, ranging from southern Alberta and southern British Columbia in Canada to central Argentina.
Rattlesnakes are predators that live in a wide array of habitats, hunting small animals such as birds and rodents.
The threat of envenomation, advertised by the loud shaking of the titular noisemaker ("rattle") at the end of their tails, deters many predators. However, rattlesnakes fall prey to hawks, weasels, king snakes, and a variety of other species. Rattlesnakes are heavily preyed upon as neonates, while they are still weak and mentally immature. Large numbers of rattlesnakes are killed by humans. Rattlesnake populations in many areas are severely threatened by habitat destruction, poaching, and extermination campaigns.
Rattlesnake bites are the leading cause of snakebite injuries in North America. However, rattlesnakes rarely bite unless provoked or threatened; if treated promptly, the bites are rarely fatal.
A rattler is a member in a group of venomous snakes.
Rattler or rattlers may also refer to:
Mode (Latin: modus meaning "manner, tune, measure, due measure, rhythm, melody") may refer to:
In user interface design, a mode is a distinct setting within a computer program or any physical machine interface, in which the same user input will produce perceived different results than it would in other settings. The best-known modal interface components are probably the Caps lock and Insert keys on the standard computer keyboard, both of which put the user's typing into a different mode after being pressed, then return it to the regular mode after being re-pressed.
An interface that uses no modes is known as a modeless interface. Modeless interfaces intend to avoid mode errors by making it impossible for the user to commit them.
A precise definition is given by Jef Raskin in his book The Humane Interface:
"An human-machine interface is modal with respect to a given gesture when (1) the current state of the interface is not the user's locus of attention and (2) the interface will execute one among several different responses to the gesture, depending on the system's current state." (Page 42).
In literature, a mode is an employed method or approach, identifiable within a written work. As descriptive terms, form and genre are often used inaccurately instead of mode; for example, the pastoral mode is often mistakenly identified as a genre. The Writers Web site feature, A List of Important Literary Terms, defines mode thus:
In his Poetics, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle uses 'mode' in a more specific sense. Kinds of 'poetry' (the term includes drama, flute music, and lyre music for Aristotle), he writes, may be differentiated in three ways: according to their medium of imitation, according to their objects of imitation, and according to their mode or 'manner' of imitation (section I). "For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration—in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged—or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us" (section III). According to this definition, 'narrative' and 'dramatic' are modes of fiction: