Reptilia · Squamata
Agkistrodon contortrixLinnaeus, 1766
Southern Copperhead
Photograph by Court Harding, CC BY, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Nearctic region, reaching 135 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Viperidae › Agkistrodon
- Grows to
- 1350mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 29.1years
Longer than 82% of all vipers 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 280 to 3,900 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
47 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
- 2007
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Brown, Gray, Red
- Pattern on the back
- Banded
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 29.1years
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 27°C
Stark et al. 2020
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 760mm2 ft 6 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1350mm4 ft 5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 660mm2 ft 2 in
- Largest male · snout to vent
- 760mm2 ft 6 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 225mm8.75 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 200mm7.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 1248.2g2.8 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 950g2.1 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 5.2g0.18 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
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Rocky, Wetlands
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1500m
- Range size
- 1,990,783km²
"considered generalists, however, mammals and insects are most frequently consumed" - and also birds (Palarski et al. 2021)
Sit (Camper 2019, Murphy et al. 2003, Palarski et al. 2021)
Stark et al. 2018
Arboreal&Terrestrial (Feldman 2015)
From coastal flatwoods up to 1400 (Beane et al. 2010), 0-500 rarely 1500 (O'Shea 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Gestation or incubation
- 108days
- Average clutch
- 7eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–18eggs
- Mean clutch
- 5–6.6eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 0.8per year
- Clutches a year
- 0.8per year
- First breeds at
- 24–36months
- Age at first breeding · female
- 730days
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
5-11 mean=6.6 (Camper 2019), means: 5-6 (Guyer et al. 2019), 2-18 (O'Shea 2018, O'Shea 2011, Beane et al. 2010), 3-10 (Phillips et al. 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1766
- Type locality
- USA
Keeping one
4 ft 5 in × 2 ft 3 in × 6 ft 8 in(135 × 68 × 203 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 × 1.5.
Recorded both on the ground and climbing, so this is the larger of the two rules in every dimension.
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 4 ft 5 in (1350 mm), at 1 × 0.5 × 1.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Southern Copperhead. 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.
111kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 1,248 g, the heaviest recorded for Southern Copperhead — 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
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — 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
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Pupil
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Viperidae
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). Agkistrodon contortrix. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/agkistrodon-contortrix
@misc{agkistrodon_contortrix_2026,
title = {Agkistrodon contortrix},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/agkistrodon-contortrix}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- 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.