Reptilia · Squamata
Spilotes pullatusLinnaeus, 1758
Chicken Snake
Photograph by B. Phalan, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A day-active, meat-eating snake from the Neotropic region, reaching 360 cm nose to tail.
Also called Tropical Chicken Snake, Yellow Rat Snake.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Spilotes
- Grows to
- 3600mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 17.5years
Longer than 100% 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
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 3,983, and Body mass (greatest) as 317.9 — 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
- 2015
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Black, Brown
- Pattern on the back
- Banded, blotched
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 17.5years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 1200mm3 ft 11 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 3600mm11 ft 10 in
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 17.4g0.61 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 317.9g11.2 oz
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 3983g8.8 lb
3600 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), max 3000 (Rojas-Montoya et al. 2021), Cabral et al. 2022 (max Total length 2100 mm, Max SVL: 1200 mm)
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, Savanna
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2000m
- Range size
- 13,535,370km²
carnivore (see Pinto‐Coelho et al. 2021), mammals, birds and their eggs, lizards and frogs (Rojas-Montoya et al. 2021)
Active (Leenders 2019, Glaudas et al. 2019)
Stark et al. 2018, Hu et al. 2020, Marques et al. 2021, da Frota et al. 2021, Rojas-Montoya et al. 2021, Trujillo 2015
Arboreal&Terrestrial (Scharf et al. 2015, Leenders 2019, O'Shea 2018), terrestrial and semi-arboreal (Marques et al. 2021), terrestrial (da Frota et al. 2021), arboreal (Rojas-Montoya et al. 2021)
NSL-1370 (Leenders 2019), 0-1500 (Señaris & Rojas-Runjaic 2020), 0-2000 (O'Shea 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 16eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–16eggs
Feldman et al. 2015, Meiri et al. 2019
mean 16 (Meiri et al. 2019), 1-9 (Ray 2017), 7-10 (Leenders 2019, Zeas and Alvarado 2015), 5-12 (O'Shea 2018), 12 (Rojas-Montoya et al. 2021)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1758
- Type locality
- Asia” (fide LINNAEUS 1758; in error)
Keeping one
11 ft 10 in × 5 ft 11 in × 17 ft 9 in(360 × 180 × 540 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 11 ft 10 in (3600 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 Chicken 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.
33kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 318 g, the heaviest recorded for Chicken 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 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
- — 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
- — 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
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — 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). Spilotes pullatus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/spilotes-pullatus
@misc{spilotes_pullatus_2026,
title = {Spilotes pullatus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/spilotes-pullatus}
}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.