Reptilia · Squamata
Crotalus horridusLinnaeus, 1758
Timber rattlesnake
Photograph placed in the public domain, CC0, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating snake from the Nearctic region, reaching 189 cm nose to tail.
Also called cane-brake rattlesnake (atricaudatus).
Reptilia › Squamata › Viperidae › Crotalus
- Grows to
- 1892mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 52years
Longer than 94% 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
43 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
- 2007
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 52years
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 25.9°C79 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 25.9°C
Stark et al. 2020
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 1680mm5 ft 6 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1892mm6 ft 2 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 300mm12 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 2501.5g5.5 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 1000g2.2 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 20g0.71 oz
1892 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Borgardt 2021: 168 cm SVL, 183 cm total length, excluding the rattle, 87 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History), neomates 25-35 cm TL (Phillips et al. 2022)
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Rocky, Wetlands
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 6–7months
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2000m
- Range size
- 2,049,510km²
rodents and rabbits (Sheldon 2022)
Sit (Guyer et al. 2019, Camper 2019, Glaudas et al. 2019, O'Shea 2018, Maag and Clark 2022)
Stark et al. 2018, Hu et al. 2020, Phillips et al. 2022
Scharf et al. 2015, Hu et al. 2020
0-2000 (O'Shea 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Gestation or incubation
- 135days
- Average clutch
- 10.4eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–20eggs
- Mean clutch
- 6–12eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 0.5per year
- Clutches a year
- 0.25–0.5per year
- First breeds at
- 48–66months
- Age at first breeding · female
- 2555days
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
1-20 mean=10 (Camper 2019), mean=12 (Guyer et al. 2019), 3-16 (O'Shea 2011), 4-20 (Beane et al. 2010), 3-19 means: 6-10 (Murphy et al. 2003), 4-14 (O'Shea 2018), 3-18 (Sheldon 2022), 6-10 (Phillips et al. 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1758
- Type locality
- America
Keeping one
6 ft 2 in × 3 ft 1 in × 4 ft 8 in(189 × 95 × 142 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 6 ft 2 in (1892 mm), at 1 × 0.5 × 0.75 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
Active animals measured in the wild averaged 79 °F (25.9 °C).
Mean body temperature of active individuals measured in nature. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
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.
206kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 2,501 g, the heaviest recorded for Timber rattlesnake — 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 · adult female, mean
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest 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). Crotalus horridus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/crotalus-horridus
@misc{crotalus_horridus_2026,
title = {Crotalus horridus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/crotalus-horridus}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- 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.