Reptilia · Squamata
Demansia vestigiatade Vis, 1884
Black whip snake
Photograph by Matt from Melbourne, Australia, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
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A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating snake from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 120 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Elapidae › Demansia
- Grows to
- 1200mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives
- Terrestrial
Longer than 67% of all elapid snakes 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 219 to 5,710 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.
Two of these figures disagree
Length snout to vent (greatest recorded) is given as 1,455, and Length nose to tail (greatest recorded) as 1,200 — but snout to vent is part of the animal's total length, not more than it. They come from different sources and both are shown exactly as those sources give them.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2013
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
Size
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 730mm2 ft 5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 758mm2 ft 6 in
- Largest male · snout to vent
- 655mm2 ft 2 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 250mm9.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 735.4g1.6 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 2.85g0.1 oz
- Length snout to vent · greatest recordeddisputed
- 1455mm4 ft 9 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recordeddisputed
- 1200mm3 ft 11 in
1200 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Eipper and Eipper 2022 (mean 1050 mm, 110 6, max 1300 mm 140 g; hatchlings 250 mm, 1.7-d g), Shine 1994 (62 males 41-145.5, mean 78.5 cm SVL; 35 females 47-130.4, mean 73 cm SVL)
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 510m
- Range size
- 1,002,945km²
frogs, lizards, elapids and reptile eggs (Eipper and Eipper 2022)
Active (imputed value from O'Shea 2018), Active foraging (Banfi et al. 2023)
(Mirtschin et al. 2017), primarily diurnal, also early evening (Eipper and Eipper 2022)
Shine 1980c
0-510 (O'Shea 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 7.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 4–20eggs
- Mean clutch
- 7.5eggs
- Egg length
- 33.3mm1.25 in
- Egg width
- 13.8mm0.5 in
- First breeds at
- 20months
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
4-13 mean=7.5 s.d.=0.7 n=12 (Shine 1980c), 4-13 (O'Shea 2011), 4-13 rarely 20 (O'Shea 2018), 5-15, mean 8 (Eipper and Eipper 2022), Shine 1994 (4-13, mean 7.5, n = 12 clutches)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- De Vis
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1884
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
3 ft 11 in × 23.5 in × 2 ft 11 in(120 × 60 × 90 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 11 in (1200 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 Black whip 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.
69kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 735 g, the heaviest recorded for Black whip 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 · 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 · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Longest recorded life
- — 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
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Elapidae
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). Demansia vestigiata. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/demansia-vestigiata
@misc{demansia_vestigiata_2026,
title = {Demansia vestigiata},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/demansia-vestigiata}
}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.