Reptilia · Squamata
Dispholidus typusSmith, 1828
Boomslang
Photograph by Miguel da Fonseca, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
A tree-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating snake from the Afrotropic region, reaching 205 cm nose to tail.
Once published as Dispholidus kivuensis, Dispholidus viridis — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Dispholidus
- Grows to
- 2050mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 12years
Longer than 97% of all colubrid 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 98 to 3,800 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
32 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 3,765, and Body mass (greatest) as 497.6 — 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
- 2012
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Longest recorded life
- 12years
Stark et al. 2020: 8.7, Pietersen et al. 2021: up to 12 (D. viridis)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 1447mm4 ft 9 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 2050mm6 ft 9 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 335mm13 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 497.6g1.1 lb
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 3765g8.3 lb
1850 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Barends and Maritz 2021 (SVL: 521-1212, mean 910.2 ± 204.39, n = 15; female SVL: 521-1160, mean 903.29 ± 219.71, n = 7), Broadley 1969: longest actually measured was a feale 1447+475 mm, 1200-1850 (Wilkey and Terrell 2017), Pietersen et al. 2021 (max SVL 1290 mm in males and 1260 mm in females as Dispholidus kivuensis; 1150 & 1440 for Dispholidus viridis wth neonates 290-380 mm TL), 159.9 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History), Marais 2022 (adults average 1.2-1.5 m, max just under 2.1 m which I take as 2050 mm, hatchlings 29-38 cm), Spawls et al. 2023 (1.2-2.1 m, hatchlings 30-40 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
- Mixed
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest, Savanna
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2400m
- Range size
- 13,476,342km²
amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, bird eggs (van Huyssteen 2023), see also Marais 2022, lizards, bird nests raiding, also frogs and rodents
Active (imputed value from Bates et al. 2014), ambush "for hours on end" (Pietersen et al. 2021; for Dispholidus viridis), active foraging (van Huyssteen 2023, Marais 2022 for typus)
(Murphy et al. 2003, O'Shea 2018, Malonza and Bwong 2023, Spawls et al. 2023), Diurnal (Pietersen et al. 2021, both D. kivuensis & Dispholidus viridis)
(Bates et al. 2014, Murphy et al. 2003, Wilkey and Terrell 2017, van Huyssteen 2023, Malonza and Bwong 2023), arboreal (Pietersen et al. 2021; both D. kivuensis and Dispholidus viridis). Largely arboreal (Spawls et al. 2023)
0-2400 (O'Shea 2018, Spawls et al. 2023), max=2400 (Ineich et al. 2015), 0-2000 absent over 2200 (Malonza and Bwong 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 16.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5–27eggs
Feldman et al. 2015
8-25, 8-14, max 27 (O'Shea 2011), 5-27 (Wilkey and Terrell 2017), 8-27 (Bates et al. 2014, Spawls et al. 2023), 10-25 (O'Shea 2018), 8-25 and 8-27 (Pietersen et al. 2021; D. kivuensis & D. viridis, respectively), usually 8-14, max 27 (Marais 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- Dispholidus typus typus (SMITH 1829) Dispholidus typus kivuensis LAURENT 1955
- Described by
- Smith
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1828
- Type locality
- South Africa
Keeping one
5 ft 1 in × 3 ft 4 in × 10 ft 1 in(154 × 103 × 308 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 6 ft 9 in (2050 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 Boomslang. 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.
49kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 498 g, the heaviest recorded for Boomslang — 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
- — 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
- — Gestation or incubation
- — 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
- — Fangs
- — 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
- — 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 Colubridae
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). Dispholidus typus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/dispholidus-typus
@misc{dispholidus_typus_2026,
title = {Dispholidus typus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/dispholidus-typus}
}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.