Reptilia · Squamata
Gloydius blomhoffiiBoie, 1826
Mamushi
Photograph by Ｋｓ at Japanese Wikipedia / http://www.aikis.or.jp/~keisotyo/, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Oriental region, reaching 910 mm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Viperidae › Gloydius
- Grows to
- 910mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 13.8years
Longer than 56% of all vipers 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 280 to 3,900 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
35 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
- 2017
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 13.8years
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 23.7°C
Stark et al. 2020
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 551mm21.5 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 910mm3 ft
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 182.4mm7.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 129.6g4.6 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 5.9g0.21 oz
675 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Mori 2021 (females 420-522 mm SVL, n = 44; males 370–475, n = 14. Total length 542.4±26.5, range 477–614 mm in females, n = 44, males: n = 15, mean 538.2±31.6, range 448–569; in the literature max SVL and TL are 551 and 616 mm, respectively, both in Hokkaido), "Mean±SE of SVL, TaL, and BM of neonates were 183.4±10.2 (n=14), 42.1±3.1 (n=14), and 5.9±0.9 (n=14) for males, and 181.4±9.4 (n=10), 35.7±2.5 (n=10), and 5.9±1.1 (n=10) for females" (Mori 2021), 63.7 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History), 45-81, max recorded 91 cm (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
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Wetlands
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 6–7months
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 1414–2466m
- Range size
- 1,460,636km²
Mori 2021: amphibians and rodents, Koizumi 2021: a skink; Kanamor et al. 2022: "This snake is a generalist, feeding on wide range of animals, such as invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals", amphibians, lizards and snakes (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
Nocturnal (Scharf et al. 2015) / mostly diurnal, also crepuscular and nocturnal (Mori 2021, see Table 2)
Scharf et al. 2015
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 7.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–13eggs
- Mean clutch
- 4.6–6.6eggs
Feldman et al. 2015
3-11 mean=6.6 s.d.=2.0 n=29, 2-13 mean=5.5 s.d.=2.8 n=17, 2-9 mean=4.6 n=146 (Sasaki et al. 2012), 4-10 (O'Shea 2011), 2-6 mean 4 (Mori 2021), 4-8 (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Boie
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1826
- Type locality
- Japan
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.
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 (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 Mamushi. 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.
15kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 130 g, the heaviest recorded for Mamushi — 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
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
Others in Viperidae
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). Gloydius blomhoffii. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gloydius-blomhoffii
@misc{gloydius_blomhoffii_2026,
title = {Gloydius blomhoffii},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gloydius-blomhoffii}
}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.