Reptilia · Squamata
Acrantophis madagascariensisDuméril & Bibron, 1844
Madagascar ground boa
Photograph by Ioannis Magouras, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Madagascan region, reaching 320 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Boidae › Acrantophis
- Grows to
- 3200mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 28.5years
Longer than 89% of all boas 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 109 to 6,700 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
41 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2011
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Brown, Red
- Pattern on the back
- Blotched
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 28.5years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 3005mm9 ft 10 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 3200mm10 ft 6 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 1800mm5 ft 11 in
- Largest male · snout to vent
- 3005mm9 ft 10 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 610mm2 ft
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 13,326g29 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 200g7.1 oz
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
How it lives
- Dietcomputed
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Ambush
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Madagascan
- Mainland or island
- Found only on islands
- Elevation · above sea level
- 800m
- Range size
- 166,604km²
no actual data but can be imputed as carnivorous like all snakes
Stark et al. 2018
Scharf et al. 2015
mean 800 (Stark et al. 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 4.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–8eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Egg length
- 70mm2.75 in
- Egg width
- 40mm1.5 in
Feldman et al. 2015
max=8 (Branch and Erasmus 1984), 2-6 (O'Shea 2018)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Duméril & Bibron
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1844
- Type locality
- Madagascar
Keeping one
10 ft 6 in × 5 ft 3 in × 7 ft 10 in(320 × 160 × 240 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 10 ft 6 in (3200 mm), at 1 × 0.5 × 0.75 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Madagascar ground boa. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
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.
910kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 13,326 g, the heaviest recorded for Madagascar ground boa — 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 female mean
- — 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
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — 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
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Sex decided by
- — 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 Boidae
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). Acrantophis madagascariensis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/acrantophis-madagascariensis
@misc{acrantophis_madagascariensis_2026,
title = {Acrantophis madagascariensis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/acrantophis-madagascariensis}
}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.