Reptilia · Squamata
Elaphe climacophoraBoie, 1826
Japanese Ratsnake
Photograph by U-ichiro Murakami from Kyoto, JPN, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
An active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Palearctic region, reaching 200 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Elaphe
- Grows to
- 2000mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 13.1years
Longer than 95% 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
41 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
- 2016
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Brown, Gray
- Pattern on the back
- Banded, blotched
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 13.1years
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 27.6°C82 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 17.3–33.5°C63–92 °F
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
- 1500mm4 ft 11 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 2000mm6 ft 7 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 542.3g1.2 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 20.4g0.72 oz
2000 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), 542 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History), Jablonski et al. 2023b (>1500 mm SVL, citing Qi et al. 2021), max 1.3 m (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Rocky, Shrubland
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 5–6months
- Region
- Palearctic
- Mainland or island
- Found only on islands
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1330m
- Range size
- 370,070km²
rodents and birds, also frogs, juveniles eat insects (Dunayev and Orlova 2023),
Stark et al. 2018
Arboreal&Terrestrial (Scharf et al. 2015)
0-1325 (O'Shea 2018), max 600 (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 8.05eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 4–12eggs
- Mean clutch
- 8.1eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- First breeds at
- 44months
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
mean 8.05 (Meiri et al. 2019), 7-12 (O'Shea 2018), 4-10 (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Boie
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1826
- Type locality
- Japan
Keeping one
6 ft 7 in × 3 ft 3 in × 9 ft 10 in(200 × 100 × 300 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.
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 7 in (2000 mm), at 1 × 0.5 × 1.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
Active animals measured in the wild averaged 82 °F (27.6 °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.
53kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 542 g, the heaviest recorded for Japanese Ratsnake — 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.
Morphs
1 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 0 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- An albino mutant of the Japanese rat snake (Elaphe climacophora) carries a nonsense mutation in the tyrosinase gene. — Genes Genet Syst 2018
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
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — 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
- — Red List criteria
- — 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). Elaphe climacophora. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/elaphe-climacophora
@misc{elaphe_climacophora_2026,
title = {Elaphe climacophora},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/elaphe-climacophora}
}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.