Reptilia · Squamata
Aspidites melanocephalusKrefft, 1864
Black-headed Python
Photograph by en:User:Dawson, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
An active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 250 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Pythonidae › Aspidites
- Grows to
- 2500mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 30years
Longer than only 38% of all pythons 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 750 to 7,900 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
44 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 6,107, and Body mass (greatest) as 5,646.4 — 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
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Red
- Pattern on the back
- Blotched
- Venomous
- No
- Longest recorded life
- 30years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 2180mm7 ft 2 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 1593mm5 ft 3 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 2500mm8 ft 2 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 1561mm5 ft 1 in
- Largest male · snout to vent
- 1593mm5 ft 3 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 550mm21.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 61.9mm2.5 in
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 41.7g1.5 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 5646.4g12 lb
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 6107g13 lb
2500 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Lettoof et al. 2023 (1567 mm SVL, mass 974 g), Shine 1994 (hatchling SVL 55 cm, 35 adult males: 95-218, mean 156.1, 19 adult females 101-184, mean 159.3 cm SVL), Shine 1994 (35 males 95-218, mean 156 .1 cm SVL; 19 females 101-184, mean 159.3 cm SVL; hatchling SVL 550 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
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Desert, Forest, Grassland, Savanna, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 10–60m
- Range size
- 3,006,946km²
reptiles and mammals/mostly lizards, also snakes, mammals and birds (Barends and Naik 2023)
Sit (Glaudas et al. 2019)
Stark et al. 2018, Lettoof et al. 2023
Arboreal&Terrestrial (Feldman 2015), terrestrial (Lettoof et al. 2023)
15-60 (O'Shea 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Gestation or incubation
- 71days
- Average clutch
- 7.8eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 3–18eggs
- Mean clutch
- 7.8–8.6eggs
- Egg length
- 94.25mm3.75 in
- Egg width
- 49mm2 in
- First breeds at
- 48–60months
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
mean 7.8 (Meiri et al. 2019), max=18 (Murphy et al. 2003), 6-18 (O'Shea 2018), mean 8.6 (Lettoof et al. 2023), Shine 1994 (3-14, mean 7.8, n = 6 clutches)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Krefft
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1864
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
8 ft 2 in × 4 ft 1 in × 12 ft 4 in(250 × 125 × 375 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 8 ft 2 in (2500 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 Black-headed Python. 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.
424kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 5,646 g, the heaviest recorded for Black-headed Python — 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.
Morphs
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 2 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- Albinobreeder consensus
No black pigment — including on the head, which is the feature the species is named for, so an albino animal does not have one.
- Banding and ground colourbreeder consensus
How strongly banded an animal is and how gold or grey the ground. Follows the population it came from and is worked on by selection rather than carried by a gene.
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
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — 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
- — Clutches in a year
- — 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
- — Fangs
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Pupil
- — 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 Pythonidae
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). Aspidites melanocephalus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/aspidites-melanocephalus
@misc{aspidites_melanocephalus_2026,
title = {Aspidites melanocephalus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/aspidites-melanocephalus}
}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.