Reptilia · Squamata
Causus defilippiiJan, 1863
Snouted Night Adder
Photograph by Ryan van Huyssteen, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Afrotropic region, reaching 450 mm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Viperidae › Causus
- Grows to
- 450mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives
- Terrestrial
Longer than only 6% 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
33 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
- 2019
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 392mm15.5 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 450mm17.5 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 100mm4 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 52.5g1.9 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 6g0.21 oz
420 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), mostly 250-50 but up to just over 450 mm at most (Wilkey and Terrell 2017), Pietersen et al. 2021 (max SVL 392 mm for males, 387 m for females, hatchling 100 mm TL), 21.6 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History), Marais 2022 (average 20-30 cm, max 43 cm, hatchlings "just over 10 cm long", also cites as 43 cm in Miguel et al. 2023), Trape 2023 (20-42 cm)
snakes only in this source
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, Savanna, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 1000m
- Range size
- 2,268,969km²
mostly anurans, also rodents (Pietersen et al. 2021), amphibians, specialist (van Huyssteen 2023, see also Marais 2022, Miguel et al. 2023, Trape 2023)
Active (Glaudas et al. 2019, van Huyssteen 2023)
mainly nocturnal but quite active during the day and known to bask (Wilkey and Terrell 2017), mainly diurnal but crepuscular and nocturnal behaviour recorded (Pietersen et al. 2021), diurnal (van Huyssteen 2023), hunts at night but often seen during the day (Marais 2022, see also Trape 2023), cathemeral (Malonza and Bwong 2023), primarily nocturnal (Miguel et al. 2023)
"surficial (terrestrial, non-scansorial)" (Gearty et al. 2021), Terrestrial (Pietersen et al. 2021, van Huyssteen 2023, Malonza and Bwong 2023), sometimes climbs (Trape 2023)
max 1000 (Wilkey and Terrell 2017)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 13.5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–26eggs
Feldman et al. 2015
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
3-9 (Mallow et al. 2003, Pietersen et al. 2021, Marais 2022), 5 (O'Shea 2011), 15 (Mallow et al. 2003), 9 (O'Shea 2011), 1- 26 (Marais 2005), 2-9 (Wilkey and Terrell 2017, Wilkey and Terrell 2017), 7 n=1 (Ineich et al. 2006)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Jan
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1863
- Type locality
- Buenos Ayres (in error)
Keeping one
17.5 in × 8.75 in × 13.5 in(45 × 23 × 34 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 17.5 in (450 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 Snouted Night Adder. 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.
7kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 53 g, the heaviest recorded for Snouted Night Adder — 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 · 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
- — Longest recorded life
- — 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
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — 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 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). Causus defilippii. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/causus-defilippii
@misc{causus_defilippii_2026,
title = {Causus defilippii},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/causus-defilippii}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- 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.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.