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Description:
The egg eater is one of the most harmless snakes because it does not have any teeth, except of some rudimentary teeth hidden in the gums in the rear of the mouth. Real teeth would probably hamper the swallowing of the eggs. The coloration of the individual species, and in particular that of D. scabra, is so diverse that I could fill pages after pages with the description of all of them. I will therefore limit myself to some sample photographs of some species. Pictures talk for themselves. Not all photos have been taken by me because I haven’t kept all species as yet.
The three species I am presently keeping in my terraria can grow quite large. My females all exceed 1 m in length. My largest specimen ever was a D. fasciata female that reached a little over 1.30 m! The males are generally smaller (less than 1 m) and slimmer than the females. I found the most distinct size difference in D. scabra, where a female was almost 1.20 m in length and about as thick as a thumb (a two Euro coin). The male, by comparison, measured just 60 cm in length and had a body diameter of just a one Cent piece.
Dasypeltis is active at night (nocturnal) and rarely to be seen during the day. But it happens quite often that the snakes start their activity already shortly before the lights go off.
