Reptilia · Squamata
Oxyrhopus guibeiHoge & Romano, 1977
Guibe's Flame Snake
Photograph by Igor Viana Gusmao, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Neotropic region, reaching 108 cm nose to tail.
Also called Guibe's False Coral Snake.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Oxyrhopus
- Grows to
- 1080mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives
- Terrestrial
Longer than 75% 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
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Vertical slit
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 1080mm3 ft 7 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 846mm2 ft 9 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1080mm3 ft 7 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 312.9g11 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 4.47g0.16 oz
1080 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016, Gaiarsa et al. 2013: a female), "(mean SVL = 551 mm; range 415–835 mm; N = 4; this study)." (Fiorillo et al. 2021), Cabral et al. 2022 (max total length 955 mm; max SVL: 745 mm), Gaiarsa et al. 2013 ("The smallest mature female was 612 mm SVL (F.E. Barbo, unpublished data) and the smallest mature male was 388 mm SVL (F.E. Barbo, unpublished data).", females larger than males)
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
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 1170–1180m
- Range size
- 4,560,302km²
mammals and lizards (Fiorillo et al. 2021), mostly mammals, also lizards, once a bird (Gaiarsa et al. 2013)
Active (Glaudas et al. 2019)
Nocturnal (Feldman 2015, Fiorillo et al. 2021), cathemeral (Gaiarsa et al. 2013, "It is active both during the day (N = 31; Sazima & Haddad, 1992; Pereira-Filho, 2007; Sawaya et al., 2008; F.E. Barbo, unpublished data) and night (N = 30; Sazima & Abe, 1991; Sawaya et al., 2008; Araújo et al., 2010")
Feldman 2015, Fiorillo et al. 2021, Gaiarsa et al. 2013
1175 n=1 (Correa et al. 2020)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 10.9eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 3–20eggs
- Mean clutch
- 10.9–12.3eggs
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
mean 10.9 (Meiri et al. 2019), 3-20 (Quintela et al. 2020), 3-20, mean 12.3 (Gaiarsa et al. 2013)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Hoge & Romano
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1977
- Type locality
- Brazil
Keeping one
3 ft 7 in × 21.5 in × 2 ft 8 in(108 × 54 × 81 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 3 ft 7 in (1080 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 Guibe's Flame 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.
32kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 313 g, the heaviest recorded for Guibe's Flame 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 · 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
- — Longest recorded life
- — 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
- — 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
- — 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
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — 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). Oxyrhopus guibei. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/oxyrhopus-guibei
@misc{oxyrhopus_guibei_2026,
title = {Oxyrhopus guibei},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/oxyrhopus-guibei}
}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.