Reptilia · Squamata
Eryx miliarisPallas, 1773
Dwarf Sand Boa
Photograph by Benny Trapp, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
An active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Palearctic region, reaching 910 mm nose to tail.
Also called Desert Sand Boa, Tartar Sand Boa.
Reptilia › Squamata › Boidae › Eryx
- Grows to
- 910mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 18.3years
Longer than only 29% 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
34 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
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Vertical slit
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 18.3years
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 910mm3 ft
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 136.5mm5.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 367.3g13 oz
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Mixed
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Fossorial, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Desert, Shrubland
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 5–7months
- Region
- Palearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2200m
- Range size
- 6,824,941km²
insects, birds, lizards and rodents (Kamali 2020), lizards and rodents (Egan 2022, Albarwari 2021), rodents, birds, lizards and snakes (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
Dunayev and Orlova 2023
(E tataricus, Kamali 2020), nocturnal (Egan 2022 for both miliaris and tataricus), diurnal (Dunayev and Orlova 2023), nocturnal (Albarwari 2021)
"fossorial (leaf litter, termite mounds), > 50% digging" (Gearty et al. 2021), fossorial, occasionally above ground (Egan 2022 both for miliaris and tataricus), fossorial (Albarwari 2021
0-2200 (E tataricus, Kamali 2020), 900-1500 (Egan 2022), not above 1000 (Dunayev and Orlova 2023), max 1000 (Albarwari 2021)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 13eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5–12eggs
- First breeds at
- 36months
(Feldman et al., 2015), ovoviviparous (Geniez 2018, Egan 2022)
5-12 for iliaris 6-30 for tataricus which seems too much (Egan 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- Eryx miliaris nogaiorum NIKOLSKY 1910 Eryx miliaris miliaris (PALLAS 1773)
- Described by
- Pallas
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1773
- Type locality
- Russia
Keeping one
3 ft × 18 in × 2 ft 3 in(91 × 46 × 68 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 18 in (46 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 3 ft (910 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 Dwarf 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.
37kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 367 g, the heaviest recorded for Dwarf 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 · greatest recorded
- — 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
- — 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
- — 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 miliaris. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/eryx-miliaris
@misc{eryx_miliaris_2026,
title = {Eryx miliaris},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/eryx-miliaris}
}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.