Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just placed a new post on the bull/gopher/pine forum about about bullsnake weights and then got to thinking, if indigos are the largest north american snake, how much does a "typical" eastern adult male and female weigh? The only adult I've ever seen in person was one of dryguy's at a show in Morrison a couple years ago and I have been dreaming about them ever since. I have no guess as to what it weighed but it was a handfull and totally beautiful. Any figures will be appreciated, thank you.

My adult males (6.5 - 7') weigh between 7-8.5 lbs, depending on the time of year (lighter in the winter when they ar not feeding much)

My adult females (6-7') weigh about the same relative to size...a 6' female may be 5.5-6 lbs. They can be 25% heavier when gravid. My 7' female is heavy with eggs right now and tips the scales at 10 lbs!

Adults in the wild are heavier in certain parts of the range it seems. This may have a lot to do with the amount of parasites in given populations, but large adults are probably only a slight bit lighter than the captive specimens I mentioned on average.

This specimen in this (now famous) photo is an adult male from GA...weighing over 10 lbs!

Seems when males get over 7', they really get "beefy"

I saw that n pine that Steve G mentions on the pit forum (I have one of his offspring)

That thing is a freak of nature!

It's a truely huge Pit, but unusual.
Indigos are certainly bigger on average as far as total "mass" than any of the other n american colubrids...

only larger snakes in the US are probably the dimondbacks.

That is beautiful, but I have to admit it something like that slithered out from under a log in front of me in the wild it would scare me to death. But oh how I would love to have that in a display cage in my living room.