Reptilia · Squamata
Naja nigricollisReinhardt, 1843
Black-necked Spitting Cobra
Photograph by Warren Klein, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
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A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Afrotropic region, reaching 280 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Elapidae › Naja
- Grows to
- 2800mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 23.2years
Longer than 99% 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
35 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 8,787, and Body mass (greatest) as 1,604.8 — 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
- 2012
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 23.2years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 2000mm6 ft 7 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 2800mm9 ft 2 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 330mm13 in
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 22.3g0.79 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 1604.8g3.5 lb
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 8787g19 lb
2700 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), hatchlings mass 22.31 g (Chen et al. 2021), 1000-2800 (Wilkey and Terrell 2017), Pietersen et al. 2021 (max SVL 1470 mm in males, 2000 mm in females, neonates about 360 mm TL), Marais 2022 average 1-1.5 m, max 2 m, hatchlings 35 cm), 130-240 cm, juveniles start at 30 cm (Trape 2023), Spawls et al. 2023 (max 1.8 m but varies geographically)
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
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Lowest it lives · above sea level
- 84m
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1800m
- Range size
- 10,643,988km²
mammals (Conradie et al. 2021), land vertebrates and bird eggs (Pietersen et al. 2021), prefers snakes lizards and frogs but will also take fish, mammals and birds (Marais 2022), amphibians,r eptiles and rodents (Trape 2023)
Active (Glaudas et al. 2019, Marais 2022)
Nocturnal (Murphy et al. 2003, Wilkey and Terrell 2017), predominantly nocturnal, but juveniles may be active during the day (Pietersen et al. 2021, see also Malonza and Bwong 2023, Trape 2023), nocturnal but likes to bask (Marais 2022), mostly nocturnal but basks and also hunts during the day (Spawls et al. 2023)
(Murphy et al. 2003), largely terrestrial but will enter marshes (Pietersen et al. 2021), terrestrial but a good climber (Marais 2022, see also Malonza and Bwong 2023, Spawls et al. 2023)
1190-1710 (Conradie et al. 2021), 1000-1700 (Malonza and Bwong 2023), 0 to above 1800 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 14eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5–22eggs
Feldman et al. 2015
8-20 (Murphy et al. 2003), 10-15 (O'Shea 2011), max 22 (Marais 2005), 10-22 (Wilkey and Terrell 2017), 8-22 (Pietersen et al. 2021), 10-15 usually max 22 (Marais 2022), 5-20 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Reinhardt
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1843
- Type locality
- Ghana
Keeping one
9 ft 2 in × 4 ft 7 in × 6 ft 11 in(280 × 140 × 210 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 9 ft 2 in (2800 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 Black-necked Spitting Cobra. 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.
139kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 1,605 g, the heaviest recorded for Black-necked Spitting Cobra — 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
- — 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 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
- — Pupil
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
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). Naja nigricollis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/naja-nigricollis
@misc{naja_nigricollis_2026,
title = {Naja nigricollis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/naja-nigricollis}
}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.