Reptilia · Squamata
Vipera kaznakoviNikolsky, 1909
Caucasus Viper
Photograph by Kristof Zyskowski, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating snake from the Palearctic region, reaching 700 mm nose to tail.
Also called Magnificent (or Relic) viper.
Once published as Pelias tuniyevi — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Viperidae › Vipera
- Grows to
- 700mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives
- Terrestrial
Longer than only 32% of all vipers 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 280 to 3,900 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
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
- 2008
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- B2ab(ii,iii,v)
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- Yes
- Fangs
- At the front of the mouth
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 600mm23.5 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 700mm2 ft 4 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 170mm6.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 162.6g5.7 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 36.2g1.3 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 4.1g0.14 oz
700 mm total length (Feldman et al. 2016), 74.3 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History), Dunayev and Orlova 2023 (body length of males earch 475 mm, females 600 mm, tail length 70-80 mm, neonate mean body length 17 cm, mean weight 9.1 g, as Pelias magnifica max 436 mm SVL and 610 mm TL in males)
snakes only in this source
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 7.5months
- Region
- Palearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2400m
- Range size
- 76,257km²
- Density
- 0.3–4per hectare
mammals, lizards and birds, juveniles eat lizards and less frequently orthopterans (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
Feldman 2015, Dunayev and Orlova 2023
Feldman 2015
440-2400 (O'Shea 2018), 1-100 (Feldman 2015), 0-1000 (Joger and Zinenko 2021), 600-800 (Dunayev and Orlova 2023 who also say they inhabit the Black Sea coast)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 4
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 3–5eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 0.8per year
- First breeds at
- 36months
(Feldman et al. 2015), ovoviviparous (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
3-5 (Mallow et al. 2003, O'Shea 2018)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Nikolsky
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1909
- Type locality
- Georgia
Keeping one
Caucasus Viper 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 4 in × 14 in × 20.5 in(70 × 35 × 53 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 4 in (700 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 Caucasus Viper. 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.
18kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 163 g, the heaviest recorded for Caucasus Viper — 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 · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — 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
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Viperidae
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). Vipera kaznakovi. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/vipera-kaznakovi
@misc{vipera_kaznakovi_2026,
title = {Vipera kaznakovi},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/vipera-kaznakovi}
}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.
- 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.