Reptilia · Squamata
Ophiophagus hannahCantor, 1836
Hamadryad
Photograph by Lawrence Hylton, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating snake from the Oriental region, reaching 571 cm nose to tail.
Also called King Cobra.
Reptilia › Squamata › Elapidae › Ophiophagus
- Grows to
- 5710mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 22.5years
Longer than 100% 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
41 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
- Vulnerable
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2011
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- A2acd
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 22.5years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 5700mm18 ft 8 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 5710mm18 ft 9 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 5700mm18 ft 8 in
- Largest male · snout to vent
- 2055mm6 ft 9 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 440mm17.5 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 565mm22 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 16,719g37 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 8000g18 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 21.9g0.77 oz
snakes only in this source
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
5850 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016) - this length is often reported (e.g., Lim et al. 2011) but I could not find it substantiated, Lim et al. 2011 say "The London Zoo had one in its collection from Negeri Sembilan (Peninsular Malaysia) that grew to 5.71 m TL, when it had to be put down at the outbreak of war in 1939, to avoid it escaping (Carwardine, 2007: 166).", in thier data there is a 5m observation and "Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve: one of 5 m TL caught at ‘Sungei Buloh, off Lim Chu Kang’ by Edlyn Choo and Mohamed bin Tang on 22 Jan.1985, and donated to the Singapore Zoo the next day (Anonymous, 1985).", Marshall et al. 2018a: neonate 21.9g 440 mm SVL, max 3714 mm SVL, 6200 g, "Males were longer (2847 ± 433 mm) and heavier (4962 ± 1068 g) than females (SVL = 2110 ± 394 mm, mass = 2075 ± 182 g).", MArshall et al. 2018b: The 24 adult males all ranged between 1.92 and 8.44 kg (_x0002_x ¼4.55 kg, 95% 3.80–5.29 kg, SD¼1.75 kg) and 2.08 to 3.71m SVL (_x0002_x ¼2.72 m, 95% 2.58–2.89 m, SD¼0.35 m). Our seven adult females weighed significantly less, between 1.43 kg and 3.60 kg (_x0002_x¼2.18 kg, 95% 1.61–2.75 kg, SD¼0.61 kg; W¼283, p<.01), and were significantly shorter between 1.95m and 2.54m SVL (_x0002_x ¼2.15 m, 95% 1.98–2.32 m, SD¼0.19 m;", hatchlings 375–585 mm total length, SVL 375-475 mm, 9-38 g (Whitaker et al. 2013, SVL seldom reported hence for the smallest TL no SVL is given), "on average measured 297.05 ± 6.38 cm in length (N = 107, range: 55.5–396.24 cm) and weighed 4464.54 ± 286.03 g (N = 63, range: 22–12 000 g).", Cox et al. 2012 (3180-5850 mm TL, hatchlings 480-650, 12.2-24 g)
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
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2570m
- Range size
- 5,560,262km²
- Home range · largest recorded
- 7,100,300m2
snakes (e.g., Shankar et al. 2013)
Active (Murphy et al. 2003)
(Scharf et al. 2015, Mohapatra et al. 2021, Cox et al. 2012), largely diurnal (Shankar et al. 2013)
Feldman 2015, Duc et al. 2021, Cox et al. 2012
0-2180 (O'Shea 2018), 76-2566, in their study 650–2,057 m (Koirala and Tshering 2021)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 27.5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 4–51eggs
- Mean clutch
- 25–33eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
Feldman et al. 2015
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
mean 33 (Scharf et al. 2015), 20-51 (O'Shea 2011), 20-50 (O'Shea 2018), "Clutch size averaged 25 ± 0.5 (7–43) eggs with an average of 23 ± 8.7 (6–38) eggs surviving to term" (Whitaker et al. 2013 who then describe a clutch if 4 eggs), up to 50 (Mohapatra et al. 2021), 14-43 (Koirala and Tshering 2021), Cox et al. 2012 (12-51)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Cantor
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1836
- Type locality
- India
Keeping one
Hamadryad is assessed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.
18 ft 9 in × 9 ft 4 in × 14 ft 1 in(571 × 286 × 428 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 18 ft 9 in (5710 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 Hamadryad. 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.
1114kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 16,719 g, the heaviest recorded for Hamadryad — 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 · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — 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
- — Clutches in a year
- — 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
- — Sex decided by
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest 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). Ophiophagus hannah. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ophiophagus-hannah
@misc{ophiophagus_hannah_2026,
title = {Ophiophagus hannah},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ophiophagus-hannah}
}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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.