Reptilia · Squamata
Hydrophis elegansGray, 1842
Elegant or bar-bellied seasnake
Photograph placed in the public domain, CC0, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Marine region, reaching 200 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Elapidae › Hydrophis
- Grows to
- 2000mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 8.9years
Longer than 90% of all elapid 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 219 to 5,710 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
31 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Two of these figures disagree
Length snout to vent (greatest recorded) is given as 2,180, and Length nose to tail (greatest recorded) as 2,000 — but snout to vent is part of the animal's total length, not more than it. They come from different sources and both are shown exactly as those sources give them.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2009
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 8.9years
at least 8.9 (Ward 2001)
Size
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 1500mm4 ft 11 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 1982.6g4.4 lb
- Length snout to vent · greatest recordeddisputed
- 2180mm7 ft 2 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recordeddisputed
- 2000mm6 ft 7 in
2000 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Ward 2001 (females mature at 120 cm, the most abundant size class for both sexes of H. elegans was 140–160 cm, 306 males & 276 females ranged from 75–193 and 82–218 cm respectively)
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Dietcomputed
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Marine
- Habitat
- Marine Neritic, Wetlands
- Region
- Marine
- Mainland or island
- Marine
no actual data but can be imputed as carnivorous like all snakes
O'Shea 2018
Aquatic (Mirtschin et al. 2017)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 16eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 8–30eggs
- Mean clutch
- 12.7eggs
- Clutches a year
- 0.33–0.5per year
- First breeds at
- 24–60months
O'Shea 2011, Mirtschin et al. 2017
8-23 (O'Shea 2011), 17-30 (Mirtschin et al. 2017), max=23 (O'Shea 2018), mean 12.7 (Ward 2001 (females mature at 120 cm))
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Gray
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1842
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
6 ft 7 in × 3 ft 3 in × 4 ft 11 in(200 × 100 × 150 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 6 ft 7 in (2000 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 Elegant or bar-bellied seasnake. 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.
167kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 1,983 g, the heaviest recorded for Elegant or bar-bellied seasnake — 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 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
- — 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
- — 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
- — 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
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — Biome
- — 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
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Elapidae
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). Hydrophis elegans. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hydrophis-elegans
@misc{hydrophis_elegans_2026,
title = {Hydrophis elegans},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hydrophis-elegans}
}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.