Reptilia · Squamata
Eryx johniiRussell, 1801
Red Sand Boa
Photograph by Sagar khunte, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A burrowing, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Oriental region, reaching 130 cm nose to tail.
Also called Brown Sand Boa, Indian Sand Boa.
Reptilia › Squamata › Boidae › Eryx
- Grows to
- 1300mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 24.4years
Longer than only 44% of all boas 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 109 to 6,700 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
33 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
- Near Threatened
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2019
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Vertical slit
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 24.4years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 1150mm3 ft 9 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1300mm4 ft 3 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 175mm7 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 992g2.2 lb
1000 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), max 1100 (Mohapatra et al. 2021), 27.7 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History), Jangid et al. 2022 (600-1200mm), "Maximum size of Eryx johnii. Vyas (2012) reported the total length of 1300 mm for an individual E. johnii from Gujarat. While surveying the literature for this study, we came across a report of an even longer individual, confiscated in Palghar District of Maharashtra State, whose total body length was 1422 mm, nearly 10% longer than the previous maximum length reported by Vyas (2012). This largest known individual was reported in the grey literature by Mengle (2019)." (Parmar and Kaiser 2022), Mengle 2019 is a citation from a newspaper saying "While Mr. Dhanawa was carrying a 56-inch-long snake weighing four kg, Mr. Bhoya was carrying a snake, which was 41 inches long and one kg in weight" - I do not trust it as reliable; their own specimen is "The snake was a dark brown female E. johnii (SVL 1150 mm, TL 100 mm, weight ca. 2 kg;", 600-1100 neonates 150-200 mm total length(Egan 2022)
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Fossorial
- Habitat
- Desert, Forest, Grassland, Shrubland
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 960m
- Range size
- 3,407,667km²
insects, lizards, snakes, small birds and rodents (Mohapatra et al. 2021), reptiles, birds and mammals (Singh et al. 2021, Egan 2022)
Sit (O'Shea 2018)
O'Shea 2018, Mohapatra et al. 2021, Singh et al. 2021, Parmar and Kaiser 2022
O'Shea 2018, Parmar and Kaiser 2022
0-960 (O'Shea 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 7eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 4–14eggs
(Feldman et al. 2015), ovoviviparous (Mohapatra et al. 2021, Egan 2022)
6-8 (Whitaker and Captain 2004, O'Shea 2018, Mohapatra et al. 2021), 4-14 (Egan 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Russell
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1801
- Type locality
- India
Keeping one
4 ft 3 in × 2 ft 2 in × 3 ft 2 in(130 × 65 × 98 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 2 ft 2 in (65 cm) deep.
The standard sizes snakes as a fraction of total length: 1 × 0.5 × 0.75.
Burrows, so substrate deep enough to dig in matters as much as floor area.
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 3 in (1300 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 Red Sand Boa. 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.
90kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 992 g, the heaviest recorded for Red Sand Boa — 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 · 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
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — 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 Boidae
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). Eryx johnii. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/eryx-johnii
@misc{eryx_johnii_2026,
title = {Eryx johnii},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/eryx-johnii}
}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.