Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello, are females bigger than males in snakes in general ? Why ?, thanks.

Im not one to comment on the yes or no, in most species of snake I think it's no, the female are no bigger than the males, but here might be some species out there that are like that, so I'll leave that for someone else to address.
I will comment on the why though.....
Typically in nature with reptiles and amphibians, the reason they survive from birth to adulthood is by sheer numbers. My uneducated guess would be that the average of about 80-90% of all offspring dont make it to adulthood in the wild. They become food for something else. So the key here is for females to be able to put out as MANY young as possible, therefore, a larger female will be able to produce more young. This is a generalization of course, in some cases, a larger female will simply produce the same number of young, but the babies will just be bigger, but this is the exception, not the rule. Millions of years of evolution have created this situation because these types of animals in the same place on the food chain, that produced only a few young, died out pretty quickly to population decline. They got "weeded out". The other animals that were producing in higher numbers, stood a better chance because more young survived.
Again, this is more about many kinds of animals, not specifically about snakes.
Wow, I didnt expect to have that much to say, but there ya go.

So, someone else wanna clarify about sexual dimorphism in snakes?
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Tom
TCJ Herps
"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"

Boas and Pythons - females usually bigger
Viperids - males usually bigger
Hognosed snakes - female bigger
kingsnakes - males bigger
gopher/bullsnakes - males bigger
natricines (garter/watersnakes) - females bigger

Like I said, it really does vary from group to group. And sometimes the difference is minor (kingsnakes) whereas in other species it can be huge (hognosed snakes, sandboas, big pythons).
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Chris Harrison