Reptilia · Squamata
Natrix tessellataLaurenti, 1768
Dice Snake
Photograph by Andrei Daniel Mihalca (Histria2006), CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A water-living, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 114 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Natrix
- Grows to
- 1140mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 14years
Longer than 77% 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
43 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
- 2020
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 14years
max 14 (Bar et al. 2021, Spawls et al. 2023)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 1080mm3 ft 7 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 731mm2 ft 5 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1140mm3 ft 9 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 160mm6.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 623.6g1.4 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 90.3g3.2 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 2g0.07 oz
1000 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), max 200 cm (Naumov et al. 2020) - doubtful, max 114 cm in Bulgaria, max 103 cm (Kamali 2020), Eid 2021 (750-1200 mm, I don't trust this), Bar et al. 2021 (150-1020 mm total length mass 2-380 g), 379.3 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, mean female SVL 590 mm, SMNH Aug 2023, n = 8, mean neonate SVL 160 mm), Trape 2023 (40-140 cm, too big?), Bonnet et al. 2023 (mean SVL of gravid females 70.2 ± 9.1 cm in Italy, 84.3 ± 6.9 cm in Germany, on Golem Grad min 63 cm, mean 87.2 ± 7.4 cm SVL, max 108 cm, from Figure 12.8)
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
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Aquatic
- Habitat
- Grassland, Wetlands
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Lowest it lives · above sea level
- 50m
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 3200m
- Range size
- 7,057,996km²
fish and frogs (Kamali 2020, Trape 2023), anurans fishes and sometimes amniotes (Bar et al. 2021)
Active (Glaudas et al. 2019)
Diurnal (Scharf et al. 2015, Kamali 2020, Shai Meiri, personal observations), cathemeral (Trape 2023, Spawls et al. 2023)
(Scharf et al. 2015, Kamali 2020, Deepak et al. 2022, Trape 2023), semi aquatic (Bar et al. 2021, Shai Meiri, personal observations, Spawls et al. 2023)
50-1400 (Showler 2018), 5-1086 (Shai Meiri personal observations), up to 3200 (Kamali 2020)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 15eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–37eggs
- Mean clutch
- 9.6–15eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
- Egg length
- 45mm1.75 in
- Egg width
- 22mm0.9 in
- First breeds at
- 36months
Feldman et al. 2015
mean 15 (Scharf et al. 2015), 29 (Luiselli and Rugiero 2005), 5-25 (Eid 2021, Spawls et al. 2023), 10-30, means 12-15 (Bar et al. 2021), 4-23 (Dunayev and Orlova 2023), max 37 (Spawls et al. 2023), 1-20 (Bonnet et al. 2023; Figure 12.8, mean 9.6 in their population vs. 14.5 elsewhere)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Laurenti
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1768
- Type locality
- Croatia
Keeping one
3 ft 9 in × 22.5 in × 2 ft 10 in(114 × 57 × 86 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.
Spends time in water, so a water area is part of the enclosure rather than a dish.
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 9 in (1140 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 Dice 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.
60kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 624 g, the heaviest recorded for Dice 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
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — 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
- — 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
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). Natrix tessellata. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/natrix-tessellata
@misc{natrix_tessellata_2026,
title = {Natrix tessellata},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/natrix-tessellata}
}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.