Cerastes cerastes, one of the MidEastern Sand shufflers.
By Dick and Patti Bartlett

"Now you see them, now you don't" describes many of the world’s sand-dwelling, sidewinding, chubby but small viperine snakes. You may be looking right at them, know that they have moved neither forward nor backward, but they, with a barely visible sideway to and fro shuffling, have disappeared from sight. And it took these sand-adapted snakes only a minute or 2 to sink almost straight down in the yielding desert sands

There are many species of these specialized snakes in the Mideast and Africa and a few in Asia and the western USA. Although all are perfectly able to crawl straight forward and often do so when not in a hurry sidewinding, throwing a loop of the body forward, usually while facing obliquely away, is a more effective and efficient method of moving across loose sands.

Among these snake are species such as the small Saharan sand viper, Cerastes vipera, adult at from 8 to 18 inches with females being the larger (this is true of many snake species). Once burrowed, this species usually leaves its eyes exposed but even the eyes can be difficult to pinpoint. Vipera is considered an ambush predator and its primary prey is lizards. If during their occasional surface activity, the snake happens upon nestling mice or gerbils, these may also be eaten. This little snake has a broad range through North Africa and the Sinai Peninsula.

The Mideastern deserts are home to several other sidewinding snake species. Among these are whiskered vipers, 3 species of horned vipers, and several subspecies and species of sawscaled vipers. Many of the rough-scaled species will often warn you of their presence by assuming a series of tight “S”s and noisily rasping their strongly keeled scales together.

Africa hosts Peringuey’s Vipers and various Horned Vipers, all able to move in either straight and typical fashion or by sidewinding.

In the USA we have the 3 subspecies of pit vipers, the small rattlesnakes, that are aptly named “Sidewinders” of our southwestern deserts.