Reptilia · Squamata
Lampropeltis triangulumLacépède, 1789
Eastern Milksnake
Photograph by The original uploader was BillC at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A ground-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Nearctic region, reaching 190 cm nose to tail.
Also called Louisiana Milksnake, Mexican Milksnake, Red Milksnake.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Lampropeltis
- Grows to
- 1900mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 22.6years
Longer than 95% 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
38 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
Body mass (a typical adult) is given as 950, and Body mass (greatest) as 541 — but a typical adult cannot outweigh the heaviest one ever recorded. 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
- 2016
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 22.6years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1900mm6 ft 3 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 225mm8.75 in
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 1.91g0.07 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 541g1.2 lb
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 950g2.1 lb
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Mixed
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Rocky, Shrubland
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 3330m
- Range size
- 3,170,617km²
mammals, lizards and snakes (Trujillo 2015), mammals, reptiles, birds and bird eggs (Sheldon 2022)
Camper 2019
(Stark et al. 2018, Camper 2019, Hu et al. 2020, Murphy et al. 2003), cathemeral (Trujillo 2015)
Scharf et al. 2015, Hu et al. 2020, Murphy et al. 2003
Coastal Plain and up to 1500 (Beane et al. 2010), 0-3330 (O'Shea 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 7.6eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–24eggs
- Mean clutch
- 7–10eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- First breeds at
- 24–60months
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
2-17 means: 7-8 (Guyer et al. 2019), 5-16 (O'Shea 2011), 3-7 or 5-20 (Beane et al. 2010), 1-24 mean=7.6 (Camper 2019), mean=10 (Murphy et al. 2003), 5-20 (O'Shea 2018), 3-24 (Sheldon 2022), 8-20 (Phillips et al. 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Lacépède
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1789
- Type locality
- America
Keeping one
6 ft 3 in × 3 ft 1 in × 4 ft 8 in(190 × 95 × 143 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 3 in (1900 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 Eastern Milksnake. 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.
53kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 541 g, the heaviest recorded for Eastern Milksnake — 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.
Morphs
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 4 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
What each pairing produces → · Two genes at once →
- Amelanisticbreeder consensus
No black pigment, leaving the red and white banding with red eyes.
- Anerythristicbreeder consensus
Red pigment absent, leaving black and white banding.
- Hypomelanisticbreeder consensus
Black reduced rather than absent, so the bands soften to grey and the reds brighten.
- Tangerinebreeder consensus
Orange in place of red, deepened over generations by choosing the most orange animals.
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 · 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 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
- — 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). Lampropeltis triangulum. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/lampropeltis-triangulum
@misc{lampropeltis_triangulum_2026,
title = {Lampropeltis triangulum},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/lampropeltis-triangulum}
}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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.