Animalia > Chordata > Squamata > Elapidae > Dendroaspis > Dendroaspis polylepis

Dendroaspis polylepis (Black Mamba)

Synonyms: Dendraspis angusticeps (heterotypic); Dendraspis antinorii; Dendraspis polylepis; Dendroaspis polylepis antinorii; Dendroaspis polylepis polylepis

Wikipedia Abstract

The black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis) is a venomous snake endemic to parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Specimens vary in color from grey to dark brown, but not black. Juvenile black mambas tend to be lighter in color than adults and darken with age. It is the longest species of venomous snake indigenous to the African continent; mature specimens generally exceed 2 meters (6.6 ft) and commonly attain 3 meters (9.8 ft). Specimens of 4.3 to 4.5 meters (14.1 to 14.8 ft) have been reported.
View Wikipedia Record: Dendroaspis polylepis

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  67.81 lbs (30.758 kg)
Diet [2]  Carnivore
Gestation [1]  73 days
Litter Size [1]  12
Maximum Longevity [3]  26 years
Speed [4]  19.998 MPH (8.94 m/s)
Venomous [5]  Yes
Habitat Substrate [2]  Arboreal

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa Kenya, Mozambique, Somalia, Tanzania No
Eastern Afromontane Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Zimbabwe No
Horn of Africa Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Oman, Somalia, Yemen No
Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland No

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Asio capensis (Marsh Owl)[6]
Bucorvus leadbeateri (Southern Ground Hornbill)[6]
Necrosyrtes monachus (Hooded Vulture)[6]

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 2Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 3de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 4Wikipedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
♦ 5Venomous snakes and antivenoms search interface, World Health Organization
♦ 6The Serengeti food web: empirical quantification and analysis of topological changes under increasing human impact, Sara N. de Visser, Bernd P. Freymann and Han Olff, Journal of Animal Ecology 2011, 80, 484–494
♦ 7Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0