Reptilia · Squamata
Pantherophis guttatusLinnaeus, 1766
Red Cornsnake
Photograph by Ethan Porcaro, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
A burrowing, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Nearctic region, reaching 183 cm nose to tail.
Also called Eastern Corn snake.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Pantherophis
- Grows to
- 1830mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 43.3years
Longer than 94% 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
39 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 (adult female, mean) is given as 704, and Body mass (greatest) as 495.3 — but an average female cannot outweigh the heaviest animal 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
- 2015
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Multi
- Pattern on the back
- Banded, blotched
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 43.3years
32.3 (e.g., Stark et al. 2020), 43 and 4 months (Kuchling 2022) in captivity
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 1216mm4 ft
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1830mm6 ft
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 5.4g0.19 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 495.3g1.1 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasureddisputed
- 704g1.6 lb
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Dietcomputed
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Mixed
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Fossorial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Rocky, Shrubland
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2200m
- Range size
- 859,551km²
no actual data but can be imputed as carnivorous like all snakes
Guyer et al. 2019
O'Shea 2018
Hu et al. 2020
Coastal Plain and below 760 (Beane et al. 2010), 0-1380 (O'Shea 2018), 0-2200 (Feldman 2015)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 21.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 3–40eggs
- Mean clutch
- 13.6eggs
- First breeds at
- 9–32months
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
3-40 mean=13.6 (Camper 2019), 10-30 (Guyer et al. 2019), 3-27 (Beane et al. 2010), 3-40 (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
6 ft × 3 ft × 4 ft 6 in(183 × 92 × 137 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 3 ft (92 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 6 ft (1830 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 Red Cornsnake. 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.
49kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 495 g, the heaviest recorded for Red Cornsnake — 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.
Morphs
5 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 11 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
What each pairing produces → · Two genes at once →
- Amelanism in the corn snake is associated with the insertion of an LTR-retrotransposon in the OCA2 gene. — Sci Rep 2015
- Color mutations in the corn snake (Elaphe guttata guttata): Review and additional breeding data — Journal of Heredity 1989
- Heredity of albinism in the corn snake, Elaphe guttata guttata, demonstrated in captive breedings. — Copeia 1962
Montandon et al. (2025) investigated "a mono-locus trait with two recessive alleles, motley and stripe , that both cause pattern aberrations in the corn snake": "The wild-type pattern of the corn snake . . . consists of dorsal and lateral red blotches on an oran
- Regulatory and disruptive variants in the CLCN2 gene are associated with modified skin color pattern phenotypes in the corn snake. — Genome Biol 2025
- Color and pattern in snakes (Reptilia, Serpentes). — Journal of Herpetology 1978
"The lavender color morph in corn snakes is characterized by gray, rather than red, blotches on a pink, instead of orange, background." (Ullate-Agote et al., 2020)
- Genome mapping of a LYST mutation in corn snakes indicates that vertebrate chromatophore vesicles are lysosome-related organelles. — Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2020
- Pterin-based pigmentation in animals. — Biol Lett 2021
- Genetics and biology of coloration in reptiles: The curious case of the Lemon Frost geckos. — Physiol Genomics 2023
Tzika et al. (2023): "Scaleless corn snakes ..., originating from the hybridization of a corn snake and a Great Plains rat snake ( Pantherophis emoryi ), were first reported in 2002 by a private breeder. These animals lack dorsal and lateral scales, whereas the transversely elong
- Somitic positional information guides self-organized patterning of snake scales. — Sci Adv 2023
- PMEL is involved in snake colour pattern transition from blotches to stripes. — Nat Commun 2024
- Amelanisticbreeder consensus
No black pigment, leaving red and orange with red eyes.
- Anerythristic Abreeder consensus
No red pigment, leaving grey and black.
- Bloodredbreeder consensus
Pattern fading with age to solid red, with a clear belly.
- Caramelbreeder consensus
Yellow and brown replacing red.
- Charcoalbreeder consensus
A second, separate anerythristic line. Not compatible with Anerythristic A.
- Hypomelanisticbreeder consensus
Reduced black pigment, giving lighter, warmer colour.
- Lavenderbreeder consensus
Pale grey-lilac with pink eyes.
- Motleybreeder consensus
Blotches joined into a chain, with a clear belly.
- Stripebreeder consensus
Continuous stripes rather than blotches.
- Sunkissedbreeder consensus
Rounded blotches, reduced black outlines and often odd head markings.
- Terrazzobreeder consensus
Broken, speckled pattern.
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 · 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
- — 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
- — 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 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). Pantherophis guttatus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pantherophis-guttatus
@misc{pantherophis_guttatus_2026,
title = {Pantherophis guttatus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pantherophis-guttatus}
}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.