cannot swallow regardless of their size. My record-
breaking snake can take the largest breeder rats
that other keepers willingly give to me because they
have no snakes capable of consuming them. The
fact that it is a strong, regular feeder and has been
provided with the best food available has undoubt-
edly assisted it to attain prodigious proportions, but
this would not have been possible without favour-
able genetics and size at birth. In my experience,
Tiger Snakes kept outdoors in good conditions (this
precludes a ‘tick farm’ that just happens to have
some snakes in it!) typically take a decade to grow
as long as they are ever going to be. From that
point on they start to 'block out' - shunting more
energy into bulk and head size. A classic example is
a snake in my collection from Lake Sorrel in
Tasmania's central highlands that was wild caught
as a young adult in 2004. It grew quite quickly to
around 1370mm but then slowed down dramatically.
Between April 2011 and January 2018 it has only
grown from a total length of 1482mm to 1521mm, in
spite of being a good feeder, and it will be lucky to
make five feet. My giant tiger on the other hand was
1346mm long at two years of age with a weight of
720g, and by December 2017 was 1858mm long (a
little under 6' 1") and 2.8kg. The amazing thing is
that he is still growing rapidly and has not yet
started to block out. I suspect that he will reach a
peak of between 6' 4" and 6' 6" in another three
seasons and weigh around 3.5kg. He will be a
challenge to measure by then as I only just had the
arm span to stretch him out along the tape measure
for his most recent snout to vent measurement (for
a discussion on the best way to measure snakes,
see Fearn, 2007). The giant also has a brother in
my care who is shorter (1709mm and 1.9kg) but
with a bigger head. I suspect that he too will
eventually attain 6 feet but he does not feed as
consistently for as long, as he enters into a sexual
frenzy and goes off his food by mid-January every
year.
References
Fearn, S. 1994. Six weeks among the 'giant slugs'
of Chappell Island. Monitor. Journal of the Victorian
Herpetological Society 5(3): 113-118.
Fearn, S. 2007. Lies, damn lies and big snake
stories. Reptiles Australia 3 (5): 22-25.
Fearn, S. 2014a. Ye Olde Slugge Files: the begin-
ning of Tasmanian herpetoculture and how to maxi-
mise growth in snakes. Scales & Tails Australia. 37:
4-10.
Fearn, S. 2014b. When giants roamed the land: did
rabbit plagues produce a shift in maximal size of
tiger snakes (Notechis scutatus) in Tasmania? The
Tasmanian Naturalist 136: 2-17.
Fearn, S. 2015. Titanic Tassie tigers: giant tiger
snakes and rabbit plagues in Tasmania. Scales &
Tails Australia. 44: 6-11.
Keogh, J. S., Scott, I. A. and Hayes, C. 2005. Rapid
and repeated origin of insular gigantism and dwarf-
ism in Australian tiger snakes. Evolution 59: 226-
233.
Lowe, J. and Fearn, S. 2015. Superb snakes: how
to rear perfect lowlands copperheads (Austrelaps
superbus). Scales & Tails Australia. 39: 22-31.