Reptilia · Squamata
Erythrolamprus miliarisLinnaeus, 1758
Military Ground Snake
Photograph by Antonio de Castro Junior, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
An active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Neotropic region, reaching 112 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Erythrolamprus
- Grows to
- 1120mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 4.3years
Longer than 76% 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
37 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
- 2014
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Round
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 4.3years
Myhrvold, Baldridge, Chan, Sivam, Freeman, and Ernest, 2015, Ecology, 96:3109-3109
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 1005mm3 ft 4 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1120mm3 ft 8 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 151.5mm6 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 260.4g9.2 oz
684 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016), max SVL 1,005 mm, mean female SVLs 555.6-710.9 mm, min 145 mm (Eisfeld et al. 2021), "largest field-collected neonate (182 mm)" (Eisfeld and Vrcibradic 2019 - but how do they know it is a neonate?), they write "Hatchling-sized individuals were recorded in most months, except in August and September (Figure 4), and their mean SVL was 156.9 ± 12.7 mm (range 121-182 mm, n = 42),", "females (mean SVL = 577.5 ± 109.5 mm, range 445 - 921 mm, n = 70) being larger than males (mean SVL = 394.2 ± 102.1 mm, range 270 - 705 mm, n = 43)." (Eisfeld and Vrcibradic 2019), Cabral et al. 2022 (max total length 798 mm; max SVL: 644 mm)
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Semi-aquatic
- Habitat
- Forest, Wetlands
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Lowest it lives · above sea level
- 18m
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 700m
- Range size
- 11,365,137km²
mostly fishes in adults and anurans in juveniles (Eisfeld et al. 2021)
Active (Feldman 2015)
Diurnal (Feldman 2015), cathemeral (Marques et al. 2021)
(Feldman 2015, Eisfeld et al. 2021), terrestrial and aquatic (Marques et al. 2021), terrestrial (Cabral et al. 2022)
IUCN (0 to 700)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 12.5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 4–21eggs
- Mean clutch
- 10.3eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
Feldman et al. 2015
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
10.3 ± 4.8 (range 4-21; Eisfeld and Vrcibradic 2019)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- Erythrolamprus miliaris miliaris (LINNAEUS 1758) Erythrolamprus miliaris amazonicus (DUNN 1922) Erythrolamprus miliaris chrysostomus (COPE 1868) Erythrolamprus miliaris merremi (WIED 1821) Erythrolamprus miliaris orinus (GRIFFIN 1916)
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1758
- Type locality
- Brazil
Keeping one
3 ft 8 in × 22 in × 2 ft 9 in(112 × 56 × 84 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 8 in (1120 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 Military Ground 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.
28kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 260 g, the heaviest recorded for Military Ground 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 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 · 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
- — 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
- — 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
- — Venomous
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — 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). Erythrolamprus miliaris. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/erythrolamprus-miliaris
@misc{erythrolamprus_miliaris_2026,
title = {Erythrolamprus miliaris},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/erythrolamprus-miliaris}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.