Reptilia · Squamata
Elaphe dionePallas, 1773
Steppes Ratsnakes
Photograph by Kim, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating snake from the Palearctic region, reaching 141 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Elaphe
- Grows to
- 1410mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 15years
Longer than 86% 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
42 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
- Black, Brown
- Pattern on the back
- Banded, blotched
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 15years
Messenger 2021 (10-15 years)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 935mm3 ft 1 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1410mm4 ft 8 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 205mm8 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 175g6.2 oz
Chen et al. 2019 (listed as SVL, I suspect it may be total length), Kamali 2020 (121 cm total length), Messenger 2021 (maturity at 400 mm in males, 760 in females, maxima 1410 (183 tail) and 1026, respectively, hatchlings 160-250, all totals, female max is with tail of 150 mm), max SVL 893 (Qi et al. 2021), 700-1200 body length (Do and Lee 2021), Yu et al. 2022 (10 females, 754-935 mm SVL, mean 847, 121-303 g mean 205; 6 males 740-898 mm SVL, mean 765.5; mass 95.3-171 g mean 134 g, not sure all are adults; overall mean 816 mm SVL, 178 g).", max 1.5 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
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Desert, Forest, Grassland, Rocky, Shrubland
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 7–9months
- Region
- Palearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Lowest it lives · above sea level
- 326m
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 3600m
- Range size
- 14,364,209km²
frogs, birds, rodents and lizards (Kamali 2020), mostly rodents, also birds and eggs, snakes in captivity (Messenger 2021), mammals, birds and bird eggs, snakes, amphibians, fish and insects (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
Wang et al. 2023
(Feldman 2015, Kamali 2020), diurnal, may become nocturnal in warm summers (Messenger 2021), see also Yu et al. 2022 (diurnal, but not in midday, fig 3: the text is very confusing)
Feldman 2015
up to at least 1500 (Showler 2018), max 1400 (Kamali 2020), max 3520 (Messenger 2021), 0-3500 (Do and Lee 2021), max 3600 (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 9.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5–24eggs
- Mean clutch
- 16eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1–2per year
- Egg length
- 60mm2.25 in
- Egg width
- 19mm0.7 in
- First breeds at
- 36–48months
Feldman et al. 2015, Kamali 2020
mean=16 (Feldman 2015), 6-21 (Messenger 2021), 5-24 (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Pallas
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1773
- Type locality
- Kazakhstan
Keeping one
4 ft 8 in × 2 ft 4 in × 3 ft 6 in(141 × 71 × 106 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 4 ft 8 in (1410 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 Steppes Ratsnakes. 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.
19kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 175 g, the heaviest recorded for Steppes Ratsnakes — 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
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — 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
- — Clutches in a year
- — 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
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
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 dione. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/elaphe-dione
@misc{elaphe_dione_2026,
title = {Elaphe dione},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/elaphe-dione}
}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.