Reptilia · Squamata
Pseudechis australisGray, 1842
mulga snake
Photograph by Belinda Forbes, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 275 cm nose to tail.
Also called King brown snake.
Reptilia › Squamata › Elapidae › Pseudechis
- Grows to
- 2750mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 26years
Longer than 98% 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
44 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 8,144, and Body mass (greatest) as 2,285.3 — 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
- 2017
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 26years
30 (Stark et al. 2020), over 25 (Eipper and Eipper 2022)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 2310mm7 ft 7 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 1028mm3 ft 4 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 2750mm9 ft
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 1297mm4 ft 3 in
- Largest male · snout to vent
- 1034mm3 ft 5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 248mm9.75 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 290mm11.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 23.1mm0.9 in
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 9.5g0.34 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 2285.3g5 lb
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 8144g18 lb
2750 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Eipper and Eipper 2022 (mean 1800 mm, 1650g, max 3050 mm, 4200 g - sounds too much; hatclings 290 mm & 17.4 g), Shine 1994 (233 males 73-231, mean 125.8 cm SVL; 83 females 71-148.9, mean 102.8 cm SVL; hatchling SVL 248 mm)
snakes only in this source
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1000m
- Range size
- 6,376,271km²
lizards, snakes, frogs, birds and mammals (Eipper and Eipper 2022)
Stark et al. 2018, Eipper and Eipper 2022
Scharf et al. 2015
0-995 (O'Shea 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Gestation or incubation
- 85days
- Average clutch
- 8.6eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 4–23eggs
- Mean clutch
- 8.6–12eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1–2per year
- Egg length
- 40mm1.5 in
- Egg width
- 22.9mm0.9 in
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
4-19 mean=8.6 n=19 (Shine 1987b), 4-19 (O'Shea 2011), 11-16 (Mirtschin et al. 2017), 4-19 (O'Shea 2018), 4-23 mean 12 (Eipper and Eipper 2022), Shine 1994 (4-19, mean 8.6, n = 19 clutches)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Gray
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1842
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
9 ft × 4 ft 6 in × 6 ft 9 in(275 × 138 × 206 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 9 ft (2750 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 mulga 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.
190kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 2,285 g, the heaviest recorded for mulga 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 · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — 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 it hunts
- — How the young develop
- — 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
- — 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 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). Pseudechis australis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pseudechis-australis
@misc{pseudechis_australis_2026,
title = {Pseudechis australis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pseudechis-australis}
}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.