Reptilia · Squamata
Python bivittatusKuhl, 1820
Burmese Python
Photograph by Tigerpython, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
A nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Oriental region, reaching 574 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Pythonidae › Python
- Grows to
- 5740mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 28.3years
Longer than 95% of all pythons 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 750 to 7,900 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
40 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
- Colour on the back
- Brown, Red
- Venomous
- No
- Longest recorded life
- 28.3years
Barker et al. 2012 (28 years, 3 months, 9 days, also in Cox et al. 2012)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 3700mm12 ft 2 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 2390mm7 ft 10 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 5740mm18 ft 10 in
- Female length · mean, nose to tail
- 2704mm8 ft 10 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 600mm23.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 23,406g52 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 10,700g24 lb
- Body mass at hatching
- 211.7g7.5 oz
9200 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), 5.74 m and 182.8 kg for "baby" - a captive female (Barker et al. 2012, see also Murphy 2020), "Python molurus bivittatus Kuhl 1820 (N=17) were 0.83–3.7 m in SVL and 3.6–15.5 cm diameter." (Penning et al. 2015), You et al. 2013 (12 females 187.6-358 cm TL, mean 270.4; 164.4-321.5 cm SVL, mean 239, 3.4-24.8 kg, mean 10.7, 7 males 159-331.5 cm TL, mean 243; 140.5-294 cm SVL, mean 212.8, 1.8-19.6 kg, mean 7.5; have data for 3 "neonates" - may be just juveniles), Cox et al. 2012 (average 4-5 m in adults, hatchlings 500-700 mm)
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1500m
- Range size
- 3,350,319km²
birds and mammals, also some bird eggs (Barends and Naik 2023), mammals (Cox et al. 2012)
Sit (O'Shea 2018, Cox et al. 2012)
Scharf et al. 2015, Cox et al. 2012
Terrestrial (Scharf et al. 2015), terrestrial and arboreal (Duc et al. 2021), terrestrial but a good climber (Cox et al. 2012)
0-1200 (O'Shea 2018), max 1500 (Cox et al. 2012)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, XX/XY
- Average clutch
- 34.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 17–107eggs
- Mean clutch
- 34.5eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
Feldman et al. 2015
mean 34.5 (Scharf et al. 2015), 17, 24, 56 (Branch and Erasmus 1984), up to 107 (Whitaker and Captain 2004), 30-100 (O'Shea 2018), 15-54 (Cox et al. 2012)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- Python bivittatus progschai JACOBS, AULYIA & BÖHME 2009 Python bivittatus bivittatus KUHL 1820
- Described by
- Kuhl
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1820
- Type locality
- Indonesia
Keeping one
Burmese Python 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 10 in × 9 ft 5 in × 28 ft 3 in(574 × 287 × 861 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 × 1.5.
Recorded both on the ground and climbing, so this is the larger of the two rules in every dimension.
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 10 in (5740 mm), at 1 × 0.5 × 1.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Burmese Python. 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.
1502kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 23,406 g, the heaviest recorded for Burmese Python — 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
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 6 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
What each pairing produces → · Two genes at once →
- Albinobreeder consensus
No black pigment, leaving bright yellow and orange saddles on white, with red eyes.
- Dwarfbreeder consensus
Reduced adult size, carried by island ancestry rather than by a gene, so it comes in degrees rather than in a ratio.
- Granitebreeder consensus
Saddles broken into dense fine speckling running the length of the animal.
- Greenbreeder consensus
Pattern lost and the ground shifted to an even olive green.
- Hypomelanisticbreeder consensus
Black reduced rather than absent, softening the saddle edges and warming the ground colour.
- Labyrinthbreeder consensus
Saddles drawn out and joined into a winding maze-like pattern down the back.
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
- — 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 · 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 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
- — Fangs
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — 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 Pythonidae
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). Python bivittatus. Retrieved 2026-09-09, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/python-bivittatus
@misc{python_bivittatus_2026,
title = {Python bivittatus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/python-bivittatus}
}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.