Reptilia · Squamata
Macroprotodon cucullatusGeoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1827
False Smooth Snake
Photograph by gailhampshire, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
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A ground-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 550 mm nose to tail.
Once published as Macroprotodon textilis — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Macroprotodon
- Grows to
- 550mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 16years
Longer than only 38% 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
40 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 104, and Body mass (greatest) as 29.2 — 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
- 2008
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 16years
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 363.3mm14.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 347mm13.5 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 550mm21.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 140mm5.5 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 160mm6.25 in
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 16.7g0.59 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 2g0.07 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 29.19g1 oz
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 104g3.7 oz
550 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), 160-473 mm total length, 2-35 g (Bar et al. 2021), 35.3 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History), mean female SVL 347 mm, SMNH Aug 2023, n = 3, min SVL 140 mm), Trape 2023 (30-45 cm, 30-65 for M. textilis - but their range is northwest Africa so it cannot be cucullatus), Spawls et al. 2023 (35-47 cm, hatchlings 12-17 cm)
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
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Shrubland
- Biome
- Mediterranean
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 310m
- Range size
- 729,077km²
lizards and snakes (Bar et al. 2021, Spawls et al. 2023), lizards (Trape 2023)
Crepuscular (O'Shea 2018), entirely nocturnal (Bar et al. 2021), Nocturnal (Trape 2023), crepuscular and nocturnal (Spawls et al. 2023)
(O'Shea 2018), terrestrial, on sands (Bar et al. 2021, SM, personal observation)
0-2500 (O'Shea 2018), 0-310 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 6eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–7eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 0.75per year
- Clutches a year
- 0.5per year
Feldman et al. 2015
5-7 (O'Shea 2018), 2-6 (Bar et al. 2021, Spawls et al. 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1827
- Type locality
- Egypt
Keeping one
21.5 in × 11 in × 16.5 in(55 × 28 × 41 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 21.5 in (550 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 False Smooth Snake. 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.
4kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 29 g, the heaviest recorded for False Smooth Snake — 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
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — 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
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — 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
- — 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). Macroprotodon cucullatus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/macroprotodon-cucullatus
@misc{macroprotodon_cucullatus_2026,
title = {Macroprotodon cucullatus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/macroprotodon-cucullatus}
}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.