Reptilia · Squamata
Causus maculatusHallowell, 1842
Spotted Night Adder
Photograph by Lucky Okpanachi Atabo, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Afrotropic region, reaching 700 mm nose to tail.
Also called West-African Night Adder.
Reptilia › Squamata › Viperidae › Causus
- Grows to
- 700mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives
- Terrestrial
Longer than only 32% 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
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 546mm21.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 406mm16 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 700mm2 ft 4 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 145mm5.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 126.5g4.5 oz
700 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Pauwels et al. 2022 (1 female 391 mm SVL, 419 mm total length), Devaney 2022 (SVL: males 249, 450, 464 mm; females 451, 546, 517, 177, 329, 190, I'll assume only the 3 largest are adults), Pauwels and Colyn 2023 (2 females, SVL 373-439, mean 406 mm; total length of one 479 mm; 2 males, SVL 471-497, mean P3 mm; total length 521-546, mean 534 mm), Trape 2023 (30-70 cm, also Spawls et al. 2023), hatchlings 13-16 cm (Spawls et al. 2023)
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
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 300–1000m
- Range size
- 8,360,316km²
anurans (Pauwels et al. 2022, Devaney 2022, Pauwels and Colyn 2023b, Trape 2023, Spawls et al. 2023)
Active (Glaudas et al. 2019)
"Active during the day, as well in the twilight and at night" (Spawls et al. 2018) (recorded by Anuj Shinde), cathemeral (Trape 2023, Spawls et al. 2023)
Trape 2023, Spawls et al. 2023
300-1000 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 13
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 6–20eggs
- Mean clutch
- 8.5eggs
Feldman et al. 2015
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
mean=8.5 s.d.=0.6 n=47 (Ineich et al. 2006), 6-20 (O'Shea 2011, Spawls et al. 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Hallowell
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1842
- Type locality
- Liberia
Keeping one
2 ft 4 in × 14 in × 20.5 in(70 × 35 × 53 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 2 ft 4 in (700 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 Spotted 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.
14kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 127 g, the heaviest recorded for Spotted 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 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
- — 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
- — 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
- — 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 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 maculatus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/causus-maculatus
@misc{causus_maculatus_2026,
title = {Causus maculatus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/causus-maculatus}
}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.