Reptilia · Squamata
Dendroaspis polylepisGünther, 1864
Black Mamba
Photograph by TimVickers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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A day-active, meat-eating snake from the Afrotropic region, reaching 425 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Elapidae › Dendroaspis
- Grows to
- 4250mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 26.2years
Longer than 99% 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
38 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
Body mass (a typical adult) is given as 30,758, and Body mass (greatest) as 2,856.6 — but a typical adult cannot outweigh the heaviest one ever recorded. 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
- 2014
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Black, Brown
- Pattern on the back
- Uniform
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 26.2years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 2530mm8 ft 4 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 4250mm13 ft 11 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 450mm17.5 in
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 2300g5.1 lb
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 2856.6g6.3 lb
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 30,758g68 lb
4250 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Barends and Maritz 2021 (SVL: 580-2081, mean 1535.4 ± 581.33, n = 5; female SVL: 1489-1896, mean 1692.5 ± 287.79, n = 2), Lobon-Rovira et al. 2022a (2330 – 2530 mm SVL), 2400-3000 but records up to 4500 (Wilkey and Terrell 2017), Pietersen et al. 2021 (max SVL 2330 in males, 2530 mm in females, max TL 4500 mm, neonates 300-600 mm TL), Marais 2022(adults average 2.4-2.8 m, max 3.8 m recently but historical records as high as 4.5 m; hatchlings 40-60 cm), Trape 2023 (190-425 cm), Spawls et al. 2023(2.2-3.5 m, possibly more, hatchlings 30-60 cm)
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
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Rocky, Savanna, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1830m
- Range size
- 9,486,673km²
mammals and birds, opportunistically termites (Pietersen et al. 2021), birds and mammals (van Huyssteen 2023), mammals and fledgling birds (Marais 2022)
Active (Bates et al. 2014, van Huyssteen 2023, Marais 2022)
(O'Shea 2018, van Huyssteen 2023, Marais 2022), generally diurnal, occasionally active at nigt at parts of its range (Pietersen et al. 2021)
Arboreal&Saxicolous&Terrestrial (Spawls et al. 2018, Scharf et al. 2015), predominantly terrestrial but equally at home in trees (Pietersen et al. 2021), saxicolous and arboreal (van Huyssteen 2023)
0-1600 (Spawls et al. 2018, Malonza and Bwong 2023, Spawls et al. 2023), 1830 (O'Shea 2018), 116-710 (Conradie et al. 2021)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Gestation or incubation
- 85days
- Average clutch
- 11.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 6–21eggs
Feldman et al. 2015
6-17 (O'Shea 2018, O'Shea 2011, Murphy et al. 2003), 6-20 (Marais 2005, Wilkey and Terrell 2017, Pietersen et al. 2021), 12-17 (Bates et al. 2014), 6-20 (Evans 2021), 6-21 (Marais 2022), funnily enough Spawls et al. 2023 writes it lays 6-17 eggs with 12-18 being more usual
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Günther
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1864
- Type locality
- Mozambique
Keeping one
13 ft 11 in × 7 ft × 20 ft 11 in(425 × 213 × 638 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 × 1.5.
Recorded both on the ground and climbing, so this is the larger of the two rules in every dimension.
Lives on rock, so stable hard surfaces and basking ledges suit it.
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 13 ft 11 in (4250 mm), at 1 × 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 Black Mamba. 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.
231kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 2,857 g, the heaviest recorded for Black Mamba — 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 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 the young develop
- — 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
- — 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). Dendroaspis polylepis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/dendroaspis-polylepis
@misc{dendroaspis_polylepis_2026,
title = {Dendroaspis polylepis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/dendroaspis-polylepis}
}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.