Coronella austriacaLaurenti, 1768

Smooth Snake

Photograph by Conrad Altmann, CC BY, via iNaturalist

A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Palearctic region, reaching 920 mm nose to tail.

Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Coronella

Grows to: 920mm; greatest recorded
Eats: Carnivorous
Active: Cathemeral
Lives up to: 17years

Body length across Colubridae

Longer than 66% of all colubrid snakes anyone has measured.

66% of 2,008 species are smaller34% larger

98 mmthe whole family, smallest to largest3,800 mm

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 98 to 3,800 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

40 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: 2016
Population trend: Decreasing

The animal itself

Limbs: None
Pupil: Round
Venomous: No
Fangs: At the back of the mouth
Longest recorded life: 17years

Size

Length nose to tail · greatest recorded: 920mm3 ft
Female length · mean, nose to tail: 640.4mm2 ft 1 in
Hatchling length · snout to vent: 138mm5.5 in
Hatchling length · nose to tail: 186.9mm7.25 in
Body mass · greatestcomputed: 98.04g3.5 oz
Body mass at hatchingmeasured: 2.4g0.08 oz

How it lives

Diet: Carnivorous
How it hunts: Mixed
Active: Cathemeral
Where it lives: Terrestrial
Habitat: Forest, Grassland, Rocky, Shrubland
Biome: Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
Active season · months of the year: 6months
Region: Palearctic
Mainland or island: Mainland
Highest it lives · above sea level: 3000m
Range size: 7,193,791km²

Breeding

Reproduction: Viviparous
Average clutch: 9eggs
Eggs or young per clutch: 2–16eggs
Mean clutch: 6.1–9eggs
Clutches in a year: 0.42per year
Clutches a year: 0.4per year
First breeds at: 24–60months

Naming and history

Suborder: Serpentes
Infraorder: Alethinophidia
Subspecies: Coronella austriaca austriaca (LAURENTI 1768) Coronella austriaca acutirostris MALKMUS 1995
Described by: Laurenti
Moved to another genus · since it was first described: No
Described in: 1768
Type locality: Austria

Keeping one

3 ft × 18 in × 2 ft 3 in(92 × 46 × 69 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 3 ft (920 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 Smooth Snake. 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.

12kJ per day

Worked out for an animal of 98 g, the heaviest recorded for Smooth Snake — 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 · greatest recorded
— Length snout to vent · adult female mean
— Length snout to vent · adult male mean
— Length snout to vent · adult mean
— 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
— 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
— 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
— Density · lowest recorded
— Density · highest recorded
— Home range · largest recorded
— Active in
— Lowest it lives · above sea level

Others in Colubridae

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). Coronella austriaca. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/coronella-austriaca

@misc{coronella_austriaca_2026,
  title  = {Coronella austriaca},
  author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/coronella-austriaca}
}

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.