Reptilia · Squamata
Archelaphe bellaStanley, 1917
Bella Rat Snake
Photograph by Harsha Jayaramaiah, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A burrowing, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Oriental region, reaching 104 cm nose to tail.
Also called Burmese Rat Snake (leonardi).
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Archelaphe
- Grows to
- 1043mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 15years
Longer than 73% of all colubrid 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 98 to 3,800 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
36 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
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Brown, Gray
- Pattern on the back
- Blotched
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 15years
Messenger 2021 (10-15)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 909mm3 ft
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 805mm2 ft 8 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1043mm3 ft 5 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 225mm8.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 163.5g5.8 oz
Chen et al. 2019 (listed as SVL, I suspect it may be total length), Messenger 2021 (maturity 550, max 1043 for males tail 134, 700-975 for females tails 125, hatchlings 200-250 mm), Wang et al. 2023 (female standard length [probably total length, unsure] 805 mm)
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Dietcomputed
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Fossorial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 9months
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 1000–3000m
- Range size
- 298,917km²
no actual data but can be imputed as carnivorous like all snakes
Wang et al. 2023
Messenger 2021
1000-3000 (O'Shea 2018, Messenger 2021)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 8.5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5–12eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1–2per year
- First breeds at
- 36–48months
Feldman et al. 2015
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
6 (O'Shea 2018), 5-12 (Messenger 2021)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- Archelaphe bella bella (STANLEY 1917) Archelaphe bella chapaensis (BOURRET 1934)
- Described by
- Stanley
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1917
- Type locality
- China
Keeping one
3 ft 5 in × 20.5 in × 2 ft 7 in(104 × 52 × 78 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 20.5 in (52 cm) deep.
The standard sizes snakes as a fraction of total length: 1 × 0.5 × 0.75.
Burrows, so substrate deep enough to dig in matters as much as floor area.
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 5 in (1043 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 Bella Rat Snake. 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.
18kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 164 g, the heaviest recorded for Bella Rat Snake — 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 · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — 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 in a year
- — 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
- — Venomous
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
Others in Colubridae
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). Archelaphe bella. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/archelaphe-bella
@misc{archelaphe_bella_2026,
title = {Archelaphe bella},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/archelaphe-bella}
}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.
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.