Reptilia · Squamata
Daboia russeliiShaw & Nodder, 1797
Russell’s Viper
Photograph by AChawla, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Oriental region, reaching 185 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Viperidae › Daboia
- Grows to
- 1850mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 15years
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
37 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
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 15years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 930mm3 ft 1 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1850mm6 ft 1 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 3122.3g6.9 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 1306g2.9 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 675g1.5 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 9.9g0.35 oz
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
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 233–1922m
- Range size
- 3,180,078km²
mainly rodents (Mohapatra et al. 2021), rodents, other smal mammals and birds (Singh et al. 2021)
Banfi et al. 2023
Nocturnal (Murphy et al. 2003)/cathemeral (Gharat et al. 2021), usually nocturnal (Mohapatra et al. 2021), crepuscular (Singh et al. 2021)
Gharat et al. 2021
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 34.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 6–101eggs
- Mean clutch
- 30–35eggs
- First breeds at
- 24–36months
(Feldman et al. 2015), ovoviviparous (Mohapatra et al. 2021, Singh et al. 2021)
11 (Mallow et al. 2003), 20-40 (O'Shea 2011), 6-63 (Whitaker and Captain 2004), 20-63 (Murphy et al. 2003), usually 30-35 but "a femle gave birth to 101 young ones in Pine snake park" (Mohapatra et al. 2021)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Shaw & Nodder
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1797
- Type locality
- India
Keeping one
6 ft 1 in × 3 ft × 4 ft 7 in(185 × 93 × 139 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 1 in (1850 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 Russell’s 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.
251kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 3,122 g, the heaviest recorded for Russell’s 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 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
- — 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
- — 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). Daboia russelii. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/daboia-russelii
@misc{daboia_russelii_2026,
title = {Daboia russelii},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/daboia-russelii}
}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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.