Reptilia · Squamata
Acanthophis antarcticusShaw, 1802
Common death adder
Photograph by Lawrence Hylton, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 115 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Elapidae › Acanthophis
- Grows to
- 1150mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 9.4years
Longer than 65% of all elapid snakes anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 219 to 5,710 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
48 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Two of these figures disagree
Body mass (a typical adult) is given as 384, and Body mass (greatest) as 182.8 — but a typical adult cannot outweigh the heaviest one ever recorded. They come from different sources and both are shown exactly as those sources give them.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2017
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Black, Brown, Red
- Pattern on the back
- Banded
- Pupil
- Vertical slit
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 9.4years
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 27.2°C81 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 23.44–38.5°C74–101 °F
Stark et al. 2020
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 825mm2 ft 8 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 580mm23 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1150mm3 ft 9 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 439mm17.5 in
- Largest male · snout to vent
- 579mm23 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 120mm4.75 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 150mm6 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 15.6mm0.6 in
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 1.62g0.06 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 182.8g6.4 oz
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 384g13.5 oz
1000 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Eipper and Eipper 2022 (mean 600 mm, max 1150 mm, mass: 500 g, max 1000g, neonate length 150 mm, 6 g), Shine 1994 (73 males 32-67, mean 43.9 cm SVL; 50 females 37.5-82.5, mean 58 cm SVL; hatchling SVL 120 mm)
snakes only in this source
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Savanna, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 9–927m
- Range size
- 2,981,703km²
vertebrates (see Shine et al. 2014)
Sit (Mirtschin et al. 2017, Murphy et al. 2003, Eipper and Eipper 2022)
Scharf et al. 2015, Murphy et al. 2003, Eipper and Eipper 2022
Scharf et al. 2015, Eipper and Eipper 2022
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 7.9eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–32eggs
- Mean clutch
- 7.9–10eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 0.5per year
- First breeds at
- 42months
(Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019), ovoviviparous (Cogger 2018)
mean 7.9 (Meiri et al. 2019), max=20 (Cogger 2018, Murphy et al. 2003), means looks like ~9.5-10.5 in Figure 4 of Shine et al. 2014, 2-32, mean 17 (Eipper and Eipper 2022), Shine 1994 (2-19, mean 7.9, n = 16 clutches)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Shaw
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1802
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
3 ft 9 in × 22.5 in × 2 ft 10 in(115 × 58 × 86 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes snakes as a fraction of total length: 1 × 0.5 × 0.75.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own total length of 3 ft 9 in (1150 mm), at 1 × 0.5 × 0.75 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
Active animals measured in the wild averaged 81 °F (27.2 °C).
Mean body temperature of active individuals measured in nature. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
Feeding
A prey item should be between the same width as the widest part of the snake's body and about 1.5 times that width.
Widely used across snake husbandry references. An alternative formulation gives prey at 10-15% of the snake's body mass. This is established practice, not a measurement.
20kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 183 g, the heaviest recorded for Common death adder — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
Others in Elapidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Acanthophis antarcticus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/acanthophis-antarcticus
@misc{acanthophis_antarcticus_2026,
title = {Acanthophis antarcticus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/acanthophis-antarcticus}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.