Reptilia · Squamata
Craspedocephalus occidentalisPope & Pope, 1933
Southern Bamboo Pit Viper
No photograph of this species exists under a license anyone may reuse. It gets the same page regardless.
A tree-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Oriental region, reaching 114 cm nose to tail.
Once published as Trimeresurus gramineus, Trimeresurus occidentalis — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Viperidae › Craspedocephalus
- Grows to
- 1135mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 8.4years
Longer than 72% 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
21 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
- Population trend
- Stable
as reported by the IUCN Red List
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 8.4years
Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1135mm3 ft 9 in
total length, tail included — Feldman, Sabath, Pyron, Mayrose, and Meiri, 2016, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 25:187-197
How it lives
- Dietcomputed
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 1000–1900m
no actual data but can be imputed as carnivorous like all snakes
a highly arboreal species (Mallik et al. 2021)
1000–1900m MSL (Mallik et al. 2021)
Breeding
- Average clutch
- 9.5
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Pope & Pope
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1933
- Type locality
- India
Keeping one
2 ft 10 in × 22.5 in × 5 ft 7 in(85 × 57 × 170 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes snakes as a fraction of total length: 0.75 × 0.5 × 1.5.
Lives in vegetation, so height and climbing structure matter more than floor space.
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 9 in (1135 mm), at 0.75 × 0.5 × 1.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Southern Bamboo Pit 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.
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
- — 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
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · greatest
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — Reproduction
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Smallest clutch recorded
- — Largest clutch recorded
- — 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
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Conservation status
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Red List criteria
- — Biome
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Habitat
- — Active in
- — Range size
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). Craspedocephalus occidentalis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/craspedocephalus-occidentalis
@misc{craspedocephalus_occidentalis_2026,
title = {Craspedocephalus occidentalis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/craspedocephalus-occidentalis}
}Sources
- 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.
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- 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.