Reptilia · Squamata
Python sebaeGmelin, 1789
African (Rock) Python
Photograph by Lucy Keith-Diagne, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A tree-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Afrotropic region, reaching 572 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Pythonidae › Python
- Grows to
- 5720mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 30years
Longer than 92% 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
37 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 73,000, and Body mass (greatest) as 56,055 — 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
- Near Threatened
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2019
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- No
- Longest recorded life
- 30years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 3370mm11 ft 1 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 5720mm18 ft 9 in
- Hatchling length · nose to tail
- 600mm23.5 in
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 16,000g35 lb
- Body mass at hatching
- 131.8g4.6 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 56,055g124 lb
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 73,000g161 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
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Lowest it lives · above sea level
- 80m
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2300m
- Range size
- 9,884,455km²
mammals and birds, fewer lizards (Barends and Naik 2023)
Sit (Glaudas et al. 2019)
mostly nocturnal (Trape 2023)
"scansorial (climber)" (Gearty et al. 2021)
up to 2300 (Murphy et al. 2003), max 1400 (Reed 2005), 0-2000 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Gestation or incubation
- 72days
- Average clutch
- 58eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–100eggs
- Age at first breeding · female
- 1461days
Feldman et al. 2015
1-100 (Chippaux and Jackson 2019), max 94 (Reed 2005), 16-100 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Gmelin
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1789
- Type locality
- Brazil(in error)
Keeping one
14 ft 1 in × 9 ft 5 in × 28 ft 2 in(429 × 286 × 858 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes snakes as a fraction of total length: 0.75 × 0.5 × 1.5.
Lives in vegetation, so height and climbing structure matter more than floor space.
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 9 in (5720 mm), at 0.75 × 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 African (Rock) 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.
3264kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 56,055 g, the heaviest recorded for African (Rock) 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.
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
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — 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
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — 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
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
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 sebae. Retrieved 2026-09-09, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/python-sebae
@misc{python_sebae_2026,
title = {Python sebae},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/python-sebae}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- 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.