Reptilia · Squamata
Simalia kinghorniStull, 1933
Scrub Python
Photograph by Lachlan Copeland, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 565 cm nose to tail.
Once published as Morelia kinghorni — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Pythonidae › Simalia
- Grows to
- 5651mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 13.1years
Longer than 84% 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
30 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
Lowest it lives (above sea level) is given as 137, and Highest it lives (above sea level) as 20 — but the lowest place it is found cannot be above the highest. 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
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Black, Brown
- Pattern on the back
- Banded, blotched
- Venomous
- No
- Longest recorded life
- 13.1years
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 25.2°C
Stark et al. 2020
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 4900mm16 ft 1 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 5651mm18 ft 6 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 49,802g110 lb
5000 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Fearn and Sambono 2000 (see also Murphy 2020): 5651 mm total length, 4900 mm SVL, a 24 kg female; neither Cogger nor Natusch et al. 2020 recognize kinghorni as valid, so it is unclear which species they refer to - if there are two... I give the same record size for both based on Fearn and Sambono 2000 (see also Murphy 2020), Fearn et al. 2005: "Adult male scrub pythons in our sample averaged 2.91 m SVL (5.1 kg) whereas adult females averaged 2.68 m (3.4 kg"
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
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, terrestrial
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Range size
- 106,098km²
- Lowest it lives · above sea leveldisputed
- 137m
- Highest it lives · above sea leveldisputed
- 20m
birds and mammals (Fearn et al. 2005), mostly mammals, also birds (Barends and Naik 2023)
Sit (Glaudas et al. 2019)
Feldman 2015
Arboreal&Terrestrial (Feldman 2015)
coastal and near coastal (Fearn et al. 2005) so I write 0-20
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 14eggs
Feldman et al. 2015
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Stull
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1933
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
18 ft 6 in × 9 ft 3 in × 27 ft 10 in(565 × 283 × 848 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 6 in (5651 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 Scrub 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.
2938kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 49,802 g, the heaviest recorded for Scrub 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
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — 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
- — Smallest clutch recorded
- — Largest clutch recorded
- — 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
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Fangs
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Habitat
- — 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). Simalia kinghorni. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/simalia-kinghorni
@misc{simalia_kinghorni_2026,
title = {Simalia kinghorni},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/simalia-kinghorni}
}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.
- GBIF Secretariat. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Used under CC BY 4.0. Common names aggregated from constituent checklists.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.