Reptilia · Squamata
Fowlea piscatorSchneider, 1799
Checkered Keelback
Photograph by Dr. Raju Kasambe, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
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An active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Oriental region, reaching 175 cm nose to tail.
Also called Asiatic Water Snakes.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Fowlea
- Grows to
- 1750mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 9years
Longer than 93% 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
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 9years
Chen et al. 2021 (9 years)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 970mm3 ft 2 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1750mm5 ft 9 in
- Largest male · snout to vent
- 970mm3 ft 2 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 182mm7.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 1299.9g2.9 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.82g0.03 oz
snakes only in this source
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
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
- Wetlands
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 600m
- Range size
- 4,120,359km²
amphibians, a lizard (Kalki 2021), fishes, frogs, occasionally rodents and birds, carrion, young eat frog eggs, tadpoles and insects (Mohapatra et al. 2021), "frogs fishes and amphibians" (Singh et al. 2021), fish frogs, tadpoles and mammals (Cox et al. 2012)
Wang et al. 2023
Feldman 2015, Gharat et al. 2021, Mohapatra et al. 2021, Singh et al. 2021, Cox et al. 2012 see also Kalki 2021
(Feldman 2015, Gharat et al. 2021, Singh et al. 2021)/aquatic (Deepak et al. 2022)
max 600 m (Cox et al. 2012)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 34.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 19–90eggs
- Mean clutch
- 34.5eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
- Egg length
- 24mm0.9 in
- Egg width
- 15mm0.6 in
Whitaker and Captain 2004, Cox et al. 2012
up to 20 (Whitaker and Captain 2004), mean=34.5 (Feldman 2015), up to 20 but a 150 cm female (larger than their reported max by 30 cm…) laid 110 eggs (Mohapatra et al. 2021), max 68 (Visvanathan et al. 2022), 20-90 (Cox et al. 2012)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Schneider
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1799
- Type locality
- East indies
Keeping one
5 ft 9 in × 2 ft 10 in × 4 ft 4 in(175 × 88 × 131 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 5 ft 9 in (1750 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 Checkered Keelback. 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.
115kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 1,300 g, the heaviest recorded for Checkered Keelback — 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 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
- — 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
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Pattern on the back
- — 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 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). Fowlea piscator. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/fowlea-piscator
@misc{fowlea_piscator_2026,
title = {Fowlea piscator},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/fowlea-piscator}
}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.