Reptilia · Squamata
Senticolis triaspisCope, 1866
Green Rat Snake
Photograph placed in the public domain, CC0, via iNaturalist
A day-active, meat-eating snake from the Neotropic region, reaching 160 cm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Senticolis
- Grows to
- 1600mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 19.8years
Longer than 90% 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
34 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 753, and Body mass (greatest) as 360.9 — 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
- 2012
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 19.8years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1600mm5 ft 3 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 360.9g12.7 oz
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 753g1.7 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
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2430m
- Range size
- 1,142,429km²
birds, lizards, mammals and eggs (Zeas and Alvarado 2015)
Active (Feldman 2015)
(Hu et al. 2020)/"es una serpiente diurna pero muy sensible a las altas temperaturas. Es terrestre y de actividad nocturna." (Zeas and Alvarado 2015)
Arboreal&Terrestrial (Leenders 2019, Hu et al. 2020, O'Shea 2018)
0-2425 (O'Shea 2018), NSL-1500 (Leenders 2019)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 4.6eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 3–9eggs
- Mean clutch
- 4.6eggs
- First breeds at
- 24months
Feldman et al. 2015
mean 4.6 (Scharf et al. 2015), up to 8 (Leenders 2019), 3-9 (O'Shea 2018, Zeas and Alvarado 2015)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- Senticolis triaspis intermedia (BOETTGER 1883) Senticolis triaspis mutabilis (COPE 1885) Senticolis triaspis triaspis (Cope 1866)
- Described by
- Cope
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1866
- Type locality
- Belize
Keeping one
5 ft 3 in × 2 ft 7 in × 7 ft 10 in(160 × 80 × 240 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 5 ft 3 in (1600 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 Green Rat 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.
37kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 361 g, the heaviest recorded for Green Rat 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 · 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
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — 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
- — 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). Senticolis triaspis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/senticolis-triaspis
@misc{senticolis_triaspis_2026,
title = {Senticolis triaspis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/senticolis-triaspis}
}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.