Reptilia · Squamata
Uropeltis rajendraniGanesh & Achyuthan, 2020
Rajendran’s Shieldtail snake
Photograph by Gachand, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A burrowing, active by day or night, meat-eating lizard from the Oriental region, reaching 234 mm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Squamata › Uropeltidae › Uropeltis
- Grows to
- 234mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives
- Fossorial
Longer than only 11% of all species in Uropeltidae 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 157 to 740 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
18 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
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- No
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 221mm8.75 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 234mm9.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 6.94g0.24 oz
SVL 221, total length 234 mm (Ganesh and Achyuthan 2020, Pyron et al. 2022)
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Dietcomputed
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Fossorial
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
no actual data but can be imputed as carnivorous like all snakes
"It is active during night tme when the individuals forage out on to land, but was once sighted outside soil surface at 11.00h in a closed canopy forest on a rainy day" (Ganesh and Achyuthan 2020) (recorded by Anuj Shinde),
"This (U. rajendrani) is a burrowing snake, like all others of its family and resting individuals have been observed under fallen logs, rocks and stones and have also been dug out during active searches" (Ganesh and Achyuthan 2020)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Ganesh & Achyuthan
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 2020
- Type locality
- India
Keeping one
2 ft 11 in × 2 ft 11 in × 22 in(88 × 88 × 55 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 4.25 in (11 cm) deep.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
Burrows, so substrate deep enough to dig in matters as much as floor area.
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 snout-vent length of 8.75 in (221 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Rajendran’s Shieldtail snake. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 7 g, the heaviest recorded for Rajendran’s Shieldtail 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 · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Longest recorded life
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — Reproduction
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Average clutch
- — 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
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Conservation status
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Biome
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Habitat
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Uropeltidae
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). Uropeltis rajendrani. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/uropeltis-rajendrani
@misc{uropeltis_rajendrani_2026,
title = {Uropeltis rajendrani},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/uropeltis-rajendrani}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- 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.