Reptilia · Squamata
Mesotes strigatusGünther, 1858
Coastal House Snake
Photograph by Frederico de Alcântara Menezes, Arthur Diesel Abegg, Bruno…, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Neotropic region, reaching 860 mm nose to tail.
Once published as Thamnodynastes strigatus — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Mesotes
- Grows to
- 860mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 12years
Longer than 63% 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
34 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
- Vertical slit
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 12years
Loebens et al. 2022 (12)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 796mm2 ft 7 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 860mm2 ft 10 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 143.6g5.1 oz
800 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Trevine et al. 2021 (max SVL 796 mm in males, 692 mm in females), Santiago et al. 2021b (max SVL 700 mm), "the estimated size at the onset of sexual maturity is 339 mm of SVL for males (size of the smallest mature male) and 406 mm of SVL for females (size of the smallest mature female)." (Loebens et al. 2022), Diaz-Ricaurte et al. 2022 (6 females 246-483 mean 401.5 mm SVL, 9-111, mean 52.5 g; 7 males 137-483, mean 301.9 SVL and 2.5-89, mean 25.6 g, and one Thamnodynastes nattereri male 443 mm SVL, 39.3 g), Cabral et al. 2022 (max total length 860 mm; max SVL 640 mm)
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Semi-aquatic
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 310–320m
- Range size
- 2,139,714km²
"T. strigatus is an active-search hunter that forages in search of prey, mainly amphibians, but also includes in its diet fish, small mammals, snakes, and lizards" (Santiago et al. 2021b)
Feldman 2015
Arboreal (Feldman 2015), "a semi-arboreal snake that frequently hunts in aquatic environments" (Santiago et al. 2021b), semiarboreal (Cabral et al. 2022)
317 (Santiago et al. 2021b)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 12.5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 4–21eggs
- Mean clutch
- 11–12.8eggs
- Clutches a year
- 0.5per year
- First breeds at
- 48months
Feldman et al. 2015
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
4-21 mean=12.80 s.d.=4.49, 9-16 mean=11 (Loebens et al. 2020), 4-21 mean 12.8 (Loebens et al. 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Günther
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1858
- Type locality
- Argentina
Keeping one
2 ft 10 in × 17 in × 2 ft 1 in(86 × 43 × 65 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 2 ft 10 in (860 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 Coastal House 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.
16kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 144 g, the heaviest recorded for Coastal House 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 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 · 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 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
- — Venomous
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Habitat
- — 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). Mesotes strigatus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mesotes-strigatus
@misc{mesotes_strigatus_2026,
title = {Mesotes strigatus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mesotes-strigatus}
}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.