Reptilia · Squamata
Micrurus fulviusLinnaeus, 1766
Eastern Coral Snake
Photograph by Norman.benton, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A burrowing, day-active, meat-eating snake from the Nearctic region, reaching 121 cm nose to tail.
Also called Harlequin Coralsnake, North American coral snake.
Reptilia › Squamata › Elapidae › Micrurus
- Grows to
- 1213mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 19years
Longer than 69% 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
36 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 682, and Body mass (greatest) as 122.2 — 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
- 2007
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 19years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 700mm2 ft 4 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1213mm4 ft
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 4.68g0.17 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 122.2g4.3 oz
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 682g1.5 lb
1213 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), 34.5 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History), max 700 mm SVL (inferred from Figure 1 in Greene 1984)
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
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Fossorial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Temperate Coniferous Forests
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 400m
- Range size
- 978,738km²
almost entirely reptiles (Greene 1984)
Active (Glaudas et al. 2019, Murphy et al. 2003)
Guyer et al. 2019
Scharf et al. 2015, Beane et al. 2010
Alabama distributions restricted within or nearly to the Coastal Plain (Guyer et al. 2019), Coastal Plains (Beane et al. 2010), 0-400 (O'Shea 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 6.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–13eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- First breeds at
- 26–27.5months
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
2-10 (O'Shea 2011), 3-12 (Guyer et al. 2019), 2-9 (Beane et al. 2010), 4-13 (Camper 2019), 1-3 (O'Shea 2018)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1766
- Type locality
- USA
Keeping one
4 ft × 24 in × 3 ft(121 × 61 × 91 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 24 in (61 cm) deep.
The standard sizes snakes as a fraction of total length: 1 × 0.5 × 0.75.
Burrows, so substrate deep enough to dig in matters as much as floor area.
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 4 ft (1213 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 Coral 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.
14kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 122 g, the heaviest recorded for Eastern Coral 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 · 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
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — 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
- — Pupil
- — 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 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). Micrurus fulvius. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/micrurus-fulvius
@misc{micrurus_fulvius_2026,
title = {Micrurus fulvius},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/micrurus-fulvius}
}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.