The snake is one of the most common reptiles on earth. Snakes live in virtually every ecosystem on the earth. We most commonly think about the large tropical snakes, or the poisonous kinds that are out in the desert, or those small garden snakes that we find around our yards, but there are actually different kinds of snakes that live in many different places throughout the world.
Because of the diversity of the species, it is not an easy thing to ask how big a snake can get. This is very much akin to asking how big a fish can get. You not only have small guppies but also sharks. Both of these animals are fish, but no one would confuse one with the other, primarily because the size is significantly different from one another.
This is true of the snake as well. Because of the diverse species of the snake, you will find that some can be extremely small while others can be enormous in length and girth. There are literally over 3400 species of snakes out there, meaning that the diversity in size, shape, and color is as unusual as it gets.
Some snakes grow to be very small when mature. The thread snake, for example, grows to be no more than 10.4 cm in length. That is roughly about 4 inches long, very small especially considering how we normally view snakes.
On the other end of the spectrum, there is the Anaconda and the Python. These are two of the largest snakes that you will find anywhere on earth. These two snakes can reach to become over 30 feet in length and weighing in excess of 550 pounds. Most of these species of snakes that reach this particular girth are found in the tropical rain forest area along the Amazon River. There, they are able to blend into the massive vegetation that exists in this area.
They are the kings of the jungle in this region, allowing them to have an almost unlimited lists supply of food to eat and no real predator that they need to defend themselves against. This has allowed them to flourish in the region, making it easy for them to have great success there.
In between these two ranges, there is a wide variety of other lengths and sizes that can be found. Most of the snakes that we are commonly aware of reach sizes somewhere between 12 inches and about 6 feet. The rattlesnake, as an example, reaches somewhere between 3 to 5 feet in length for the most part.
From a historical perspective, fossil records show that there are snakes out there that lived hundreds of thousands of years ago that grew was long as 42-feet in length. None of these larger size snakes exist today.
Read more:
Snake Control,
Venomous Snakes of Florida,
How to Identify Snakes,
How to Kill Snakes.
