Reptilia · Squamata
Helicops pastazaeShreve, 1934
Shreve's Keelback
Photograph by Benjamin Hidalgo, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Neotropic region, reaching 100 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Helicops
- Grows to
- 1000mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives
- Semi-aquatic
Longer than 70% 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
32 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
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 715mm2 ft 4 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1000mm3 ft 3 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 110mm4.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 109.2g3.9 oz
max 715 mm SVL in females, min 402; neonates are <230 mm, but looks like the smallest are ~110 mm from Figure S1, The smallest reproductive male measured 276 mm SVL, means are 506.2 ± 74.7 for adult females and 359.8 ± 45.6 for males (Garcia-Cobos et al. 2021),
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- 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
- Elevation · above sea level
- 800m
- Range size
- 60,109km²
Fish (Ramirez et al. 2023
Garcia-Cobos et al. 2021
aquatic (Garcia-Cobos et al. 2021)
800 n=1 (Cobos & Sanchez 2019, also Garcia-Cobos et al. 2021)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 10.5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 3–18eggs
- Mean clutch
- 8.7eggs
Cobos & Sanchez 2019, Moraes-da-Silva et al. 2022
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
11 n=1 (Cobos & Sanchez 2019), "3 to 18 eggs (mean ± SD = 8.7 ± 4.3, n = 10)" (Garcia-Cobos et al. 2021)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Shreve
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1934
- Type locality
- Ecuador
Keeping one
3 ft 3 in × 19.5 in × 2 ft 6 in(100 × 50 × 75 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 3 in (1000 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 Shreve's 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.
13kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 109 g, the heaviest recorded for Shreve's 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 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
- — Longest recorded life
- — 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
- — 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
- — Population trend
- — 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). Helicops pastazae. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/helicops-pastazae
@misc{helicops_pastazae_2026,
title = {Helicops pastazae},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/helicops-pastazae}
}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.