Colubridae
family of snakes (Serpentes)
Colubridae (, commonly known as colubrids , from Latin: coluber, 'snake') is a family of snakes. With 249 genera, it is the largest snake family. The earliest fossil species of the family date back to the Late Eocene epoch, with earlier origins suspected. Colubrid snakes are found on every continent except Antarctica.
Description
Colubrids are a very diverse group of snakes. They can exhibit many different body styles, body sizes, colours, and patterns. They can also live in many different types of habitats including aquatic, terrestrial, semi-arboreal, arboreal, desert, mountainous forests, semi-fossorial, and brackish waters.
A primarily shy and harmless group of snakes, the vast majority of colubrids are not venomous, nor do most colubrids produce venom that is medically impactful to mammals. However, the bites of some can escalate quickly to emergency situations. Furthermore, within the Colubridae, the South African boomslang and twig snakes, as well as the Asian keelback snakes (Rhabdophis sp.) have long been notorious for inflicting the worst bites on humans, with the most confirmed fatalities.
“Colubridae” enters the record as family of snakes (Serpentes). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Colubridae, family and snakes can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q182751. The Library of Congress control number is sh85028731. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Colubridae” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.