Reptilia · Squamata
Pituophis cateniferBlainville, 1835
Gopher Snake
Photograph by Benjamin Genter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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A burrowing, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Nearctic region, reaching 279 cm nose to tail.
Also called Bullsnake, Central Baja California Gopher Snake, Great Basin Gopher Snake.
Once published as Pituophis affinis — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Pituophis
- Grows to
- 2790mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 33.8years
Longer than 100% 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
41 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 7,275.5, and Body mass (greatest) as 1,337.2 — 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
- 2007
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 33.8years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 25.5°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 26.7°C80 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 26.7°C
Stark et al. 2020
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 2790mm9 ft 2 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 225mm8.75 in
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 9.8g0.35 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 1337.2g2.9 lb
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 7275.5g16 lb
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
- Fossorial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Savanna, Shrubland
- Biome
- Temperate Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 8–12months
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2900m
- Range size
- 5,592,433km²
mostly rodents (Grismer and Grismer 2022, for P. affinis), rosents, rabbits and ground nesting birds (Sheldon 2022)
Active (Glaudas et al. 2019)
(Hu et al. 2020, O'Shea 2018), diurnal (Grismer and Grismer 2022, as P. affinis)
O'Shea 2018
0-2895 (O'Shea 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 11.1eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–24eggs
- Mean clutch
- 8eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- First breeds at
- 48months
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
mean 8 (Meiri et al. 2019), 2-24 (O'Shea 2018), up to 20 (Grismer and Grismer 2022, for P. affinis), 3-24 (Sheldon 2022), 8-20 (Phillips et al. 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- Pituophis catenifer affinis HALLOWELL 1852 Pituophis catenifer annectens BAIRD & GIRARD 1853 Pituophis catenifer catenifer (BLAINVILLE 1835) Pituophis catenifer deserticola STEJNEGER 1893 Pituophis catenifer fulginatus KLAUBER 1946 Pituophis catenifer pumilus KLAUBER 1946 Pituophis catenifer sayi (SCHLEGEL 1837)
- Described by
- Blainville
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1835
- Type locality
- USA
Keeping one
9 ft 2 in × 4 ft 7 in × 6 ft 10 in(279 × 140 × 209 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 4 ft 7 in (140 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 9 ft 2 in (2790 mm), at 1 × 0.5 × 0.75 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 78 °F (25.5 °C).
Preferred body temperature, recorded in a laboratory gradient where the animal could choose freely. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
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.
118kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 1,337 g, the heaviest recorded for Gopher 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.
Morphs
1 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 4 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
What each pairing produces → · Two genes at once →
- Scalelesspeer reviewed
- A scaleless snake: Tests of the role of reptilian scales in water loss and heat transfer. — Copeia 1972
- Albinobreeder consensus
No black pigment, leaving orange and cream blotching with red eyes.
- Hypomelanisticbreeder consensus
Black reduced, softening the blotch edges and lifting the yellows and oranges.
- Patternlessbreeder consensus
Blotching lost, leaving an evenly coloured tan or straw animal.
- Subspecies and localitybreeder consensus
Ground colour, blotch shape and adult size by population. This follows where the animal came from rather than a gene, and does not produce a ratio.
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 · greatest recorded
- — 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
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — 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
- — 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
- — 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). Pituophis catenifer. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pituophis-catenifer
@misc{pituophis_catenifer_2026,
title = {Pituophis catenifer},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pituophis-catenifer}
}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.