Reptilia · Squamata
Thamnophis melanogasterPeters, 1864
Blackbelly Garter Snake
Photograph by Aa A, CC BY, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating snake from the Nearctic region, reaching 864 mm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Thamnophis
- Grows to
- 864mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives
- Semi-aquatic
Longer than 63% 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.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Endangered
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2007
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- A2c+4c
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 20.02°C68 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 9–35°C48–95 °F
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 440mm17.5 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 864mm2 ft 10 in
- Female length · mean, nose to tail
- 550mm21.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 157.6g5.6 oz
864 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), Malvaez-Malanco et al. 2023 (1 gravid female 440 mm SVL, 110 mm tail length, 52.2 g).
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Semi-aquatic
- Habitat
- Forest, Wetlands
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Coniferous Forests
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 769–2555m
- Range size
- 435,626km²
- Density
- 158.5–159per hectare
primarily frogs, tadpoles, and fish (Malvaez-Malanco et al. 2023)
Active (Hernandez-Salinas et al. 2023)
Feldman 2015
Feldman 2015, Deepak et al. 2022, Malvaez-Malanco et al. 2023
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 12.5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 12–13eggs
- Mean clutch
- 12.9eggs
Feldman et al. 2015
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
mean 12.9 (Rossman et al. 1996)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- Thamnophis melanogaster canescens SMITH 1942 Thamnophis melanogaster chihuahuaensis TANNER 1959 Thamnophis melanogaster linearis SMITH, NIXON & SMITH 1950 Thamnophis melanogaster melanogaster (PETERS 1864)
- Described by
- Peters
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1864
- Type locality
- Mexico
Keeping one
Blackbelly Garter Snake is assessed as Endangered 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.
2 ft 10 in × 17 in × 2 ft 2 in(86 × 43 × 65 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 × 0.75.
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 2 ft 10 in (864 mm), at 1 × 0.5 × 0.75 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
Active animals measured in the wild averaged 68 °F (20 °C).
Mean body temperature of active individuals measured in nature. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
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.
18kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 158 g, the heaviest recorded for Blackbelly Garter 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 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
- — 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
- — Longest recorded life
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — 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
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Sex decided by
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
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). Thamnophis melanogaster. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/thamnophis-melanogaster
@misc{thamnophis_melanogaster_2026,
title = {Thamnophis melanogaster},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/thamnophis-melanogaster}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.