Reptilia · Squamata
Cerastes viperaLinnaeus, 1758
Sahara Sand Viper
Photograph by Julien Renoult, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 480 mm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Viperidae › Cerastes
- Grows to
- 480mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 6years
Longer than only 8% 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
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
- 2012
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 6years
max 6 in cativity (Bar et al. 2021)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 295mm11.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 229.5mm9 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 480mm19 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 119mm4.75 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 135mm5.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 24.68g0.87 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 10.26g0.36 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.81g0.03 oz
480 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), 100-430 mm total length an old 490 mm record from Egypt, 1-56 g (Bar et al. 2021), 56 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History), mean female SVL 229.5 mm, SMNH Aug 2023, n = 5, mean neonate SVL 119 mm, max SVL 295), Trape 2023: 25-53 cm (I have no other records approaching 53 cm), Spawls et al. 2023 (20- ca. 50 but mostly to 30, hatchlings 12-15 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
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Desert, Shrubland
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1000m
- Range size
- 8,545,828km²
lizards (Bar et al. 2021, Tesler et al. 2022), mostly lizards (Spawls et al. 2023)
Sit (O'Shea 2018, Tesler et al. 2022), mixed (Bar et al. 2021), mostly ambush (Tesler et al. 2023)
Nocturnal (Scharf et al. 2015, Tesler et al. 2022, SM, pers. obs., Spawls et al. 2023), nocturnal and crepuscular (Bar et al. 2021), cathemeral: hunts lizards by day (Tesler et al. 2023)
O'Shea 2018, pers. obs., Bar et al. 2021, Spawls et al. 2023
near sea level (O'Shea 2018), 0 to above 1000 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–8eggs
- Mean clutch
- 5eggs
- First breeds at
- 12months
(Feldman et al., 2015, Meiri et al. 2019, Spawls et al. 2023), some populations are oviparous, while others viviparous (who?), ovoviviparous (Bar et al. 2021)
mean 5 (Meiri et al. 2019), 8 (Mallow et al. 2003), 1-8 (Bar et al. 2021), 3-6 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1758
- Type locality
- Egypt
Keeping one
19 in × 9.5 in × 14 in(48 × 24 × 36 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 19 in (480 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 Sahara Sand Viper. 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.
3kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 25 g, the heaviest recorded for Sahara Sand Viper — 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
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — 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
- — 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
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
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). Cerastes vipera. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/cerastes-vipera
@misc{cerastes_vipera_2026,
title = {Cerastes vipera},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/cerastes-vipera}
}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.