Reptilia · Squamata
Austrelaps ramsayiKrefft, 1864
Highlands Copperhead
Photograph by Hilary Rose Dawson, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 125 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Elapidae › Austrelaps
- Grows to
- 1250mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 15years
Longer than 71% 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
39 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
- 2017
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 15years
Stark et al. 2020: 11, Eipper and Eipper 2022: more than 15
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 1030mm3 ft 5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 639mm2 ft 1 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1250mm4 ft 1 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 738.5mm2 ft 5 in
- Largest male · snout to vent
- 641mm2 ft 1 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 136.3mm5.25 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 175mm7 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 14.64mm0.6 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 315.1g11.1 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 2.24g0.08 oz
1100 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Shine 1987 (SVL 446-1030 mm, female means 637-645 mm, full term embryos, 13.5 cm, 13.3 cm, and 14.2 cm in three A. ramsayi, smallest field collected 132 mm), Eipper and Eipper 2022 (mean 950 mm, 400 g; max 1250 mm, 900 g; neonates 175 mm, 3.5 g), Shine 1994 (82 males 44.6-103, mean 73.8 cm SVL; 43 females 46.3-77.6, mean 63.9 cm SVL; hatchling SVL 137 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
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Shrubland
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 1290–1300m
- Range size
- 166,512km²
frogs and lizards (Shine 1987), frogs, lizards, and snakes (Eipper and Eipper 2022)
active (Eipper and Eipper 2022)
(Cogger 2018), diurnal occasionally nocturnal in warm weather (Eipper and Eipper 2022)
Scharf et al. 2015
max 1300 (Torkkola et al. 2021)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 14.6eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5–32eggs
- Mean clutch
- 14.6–17eggs
- Clutches a year
- 0.67per year
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019, Shine 1987
mean=15 (Shine 1987a), max=20, 9-31 mean=17 (Cogger 2018), 5-32, mean 16 (Eipper and Eipper 2022), Shine 1994 (5-24, mean 14.6, n = 21 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
4 ft 1 in × 2 ft 1 in × 3 ft 1 in(125 × 63 × 94 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 4 ft 1 in (1250 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 Highlands 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.
33kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 315 g, the heaviest recorded for Highlands 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 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 · 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
- — Clutches in a year
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Population trend
- — 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). Austrelaps ramsayi. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/austrelaps-ramsayi
@misc{austrelaps_ramsayi_2026,
title = {Austrelaps ramsayi},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/austrelaps-ramsayi}
}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.