Reptilia · Squamata
Trimorphodon tauCope, 1870
Mexican Lyre Snake
Photograph by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Neotropic region, reaching 888 mm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Colubridae › Trimorphodon
- Grows to
- 888mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 4.8years
Longer than 64% 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
36 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
Length snout to vent (greatest recorded) is given as 1,500, and Length nose to tail (greatest recorded) as 888 — but snout to vent is part of the animal's total length, not more than it. 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
- 2007
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Colour on the back
- Black, Brown
- Pattern on the back
- Banded, blotched
- Pupil
- Vertical slit
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the back of the mouth
- Longest recorded life
- 4.8years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Female length · mean, nose to tail
- 651mm2 ft 2 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 90.2g3.2 oz
- Length snout to vent · greatest recordeddisputed
- 1500mm4 ft 11 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recordeddisputed
- 888mm2 ft 11 in
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
snakes only in this source
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Rocky
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Coniferous Forests
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 100–2600m
- Range size
- 609,768km²
mainly lizards although "The diet of this snake is composed mainly of lizards of the genera Aspidoscelis and Sceloporus, although frogs and mammals (McDiarmid and Scott 1970. Los Angeles Co. Mus. Nat. Hist. 179:1–43), fishes (Hernández-Árciga et al. 2018. Los anfibios y reptiles de Guanajuato. SEMAOT and Herpetario de la Sierra Gorda, Guanajuato, México. 284 pp.), geckos (Lazcano-Villareal et al. 2010. Serpientes de Nuevo León. UANL, Nuevo León, México. 502 pp.), ground-nesting birds and their eggs (Woolrich-Piña et al. 2005. Anfibios y reptiles del Valle de Zapotitlán Salinas, Puebla. UNAM and CONABIO, México. 54 pp.) are also probably eaten." (Sigala-Rodriguez et al. 2022)
Active (Hernandez-Salinas et al. 2023)
Scharf et al. 2015
100-2600 (Banda-Leal et al. 2022)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 7eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 7eggs
- Mean clutch
- 7eggs
Feldman et al. 2015
mean 7 (Scharf et al. 2015)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- Trimorphodon tau latifascia (PETERS 1870) Trimorphodon tau tau (COPE 1870)
- Described by
- Cope
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1870
- Type locality
- Mexico
Keeping one
2 ft 11 in × 17.5 in × 2 ft 2 in(89 × 44 × 67 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 11 in (888 mm), at 1 × 0.5 × 0.75 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Mexican Lyre 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.
11kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 90 g, the heaviest recorded for Mexican Lyre 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
- — 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
- — 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
- — 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 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). Trimorphodon tau. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/trimorphodon-tau
@misc{trimorphodon_tau_2026,
title = {Trimorphodon tau},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/trimorphodon-tau}
}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.