Puff Adder

• comportamientoAlthough it accounts for a great many bites across Africa because of its wide distribution, it is usually a slow-moving snake that would rather rely on camouflage than flee.
• A Kenyan female in a Czech zoo gave birth to 156 young: the largest litter recorded in any snake in the world.
• It kills more people than any other African snake, not through aggression but through the opposite: it trusts its camouflage so completely that it does not move off the path and people tread on it.
• Its body, too thick to crawl in a zigzag, moves in a straight line with a rectilinear motion similar to a caterpillar's.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (reptile)

Habitat and environment

Savannah, grassland and open rocky scrub of sub-Saharan Africa and the south-west of the Arabian Peninsula. Absent from the Sahara, dense rainforest and high mountains; it needs a permanent source of water and cover

Birth weight

14 - 25 g

Size at birth

12.5-25.5 cm long at birth, with fangs and venom already functional

Sexual maturity

At 4 years

Gestation / incubation

136-159 days. It is viviparous: it retains the soft-shelled eggs until they hatch inside the female

Litter / clutch size

20-40 young as a rule, with litters of 50-60 far from rare and maxima above 80

Sources consulted: IUCN Red List; Animal Diversity Web; Branch 1998, Field Guide to Snakes and Other Reptiles of Southern Africa; Spawls y Branch 1995, The Dangerous Snakes of Africa; Mallow et al. 2003; Dawson et al. 2024, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases 18

Best time: All year round; it is nocturnal and often basks on paths and tracks at dusk