Reptilia · Squamata
Lichanura trivirgataCope, 1861
Rosy Boa
Photograph by 5snake5, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
A rock-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Nearctic region, reaching 112 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Boidae › Lichanura
- Grows to
- 1120mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 31years
Longer than only 38% of all boas 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 109 to 6,700 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
- 2016
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Vertical slit
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 31years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 1100mm3 ft 7 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1120mm3 ft 8 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 876.8g1.9 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 450g15.9 oz
1120 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Soldatini et al. 2023 (110 cm SVL though they wrote 110 mm)
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
- Ambush
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Saxicolous
- Habitat
- Shrubland
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2070m
- Range size
- 210,341km²
small mammals (Grismer and Grismer 2022)
(Stark et al. 2018, Hu et al. 2020, also Soldatini et al. 2023, n = 1), "active both night and day depending on the temperature" (Grismer and Grismer 2022)
Hu et al. 2020, Murphy et al. 2003
0-2070 (Feldman 2015), 0-2000 (O'Shea 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Gestation or incubation
- 130days
- Average clutch
- 7.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–14eggs
- Mean clutch
- 4–5eggs
Feldman et al. 2015
1-13 means: 4-5 (Murphy et al. 2003), 2-14 (Heimes 2016), 1-12 (O'Shea 2018), up to 7 (Grismer and Grismer 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Cope
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1861
- Type locality
- Mexico
Keeping one
3 ft 8 in × 22 in × 2 ft 9 in(112 × 56 × 84 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.
Lives on rock, so stable hard surfaces and basking ledges suit it.
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 8 in (1120 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 Rosy Boa. 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.
81kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 877 g, the heaviest recorded for Rosy Boa — 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, 3 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
What each pairing produces → · Two genes at once →
- Albinobreeder consensus
No black pigment, leaving orange stripes on cream with red eyes.
- Anerythristicbreeder consensus
Orange and red absent, leaving grey stripes on a paler ground.
- Locality typebreeder consensus
How wide, how straight and how strongly coloured the three stripes are. This tracks the population an animal came from and is worked on by selection, not carried by a single gene.
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 · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — 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 the young develop
- — 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
- — 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 Boidae
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). Lichanura trivirgata. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/lichanura-trivirgata
@misc{lichanura_trivirgata_2026,
title = {Lichanura trivirgata},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/lichanura-trivirgata}
}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.