Black mambas live across a wide part of sub-Saharan Africa, from Eritrea in the north to South Africa and Namibia in the south and west. In South Africa they live along the coastal regions from KwaZulu-Natal to Port St Johns, and they live on grassy savannas and rocky hills, in places with cover such as rocks and fallen trees. A black mamba keeps a home range but is not highly territorial, and the size of the range varies with the habitat and with how much prey there is.

The average adult black mamba is approximately 2 to 2.5 metres long, which is approximately 6.6 to 8.2 feet. National Geographic lists its weight as up to 3.5 pounds, as of November 2026, but the source does not say which animals were weighed. It has a coffin-shaped head and smooth scales, in 23 to 25 rows around the middle of the body, and its belly is lighter than its back, from cream to pale grey-green.

A black mamba is not black, and its body is gray or brown. The inside of its mouth is blue-black, and that is where its name comes from. The species name, polylepis, comes from Greek words that mean many scales, and the genus name, Dendroaspis, comes from dendro-, which means tree.

Günther named the black mamba Dendraspis polylepis in 1864, and its type specimen is the skin of an 1829 mm specimen. The mambas today are the genus Dendroaspis: four species, the black mamba and three green mambas, and a 2025 study found that the black mamba's closest relative is the eastern green mamba. The black mamba belongs to the snake family Elapidae, which includes many other venomous snakes.

How fast is a black mamba? Guinness World Records lists the black mamba as the fastest land snake, at 16 to 19 kilometres an hour (10 to 12 miles an hour) in short bursts over level ground, as of November 2026.

A black mamba moves by lateral undulation, which means it moves in an S shape. Black mambas prefer to travel on the ground, but they can also climb trees, and a black mamba can lift its head and approximately a third of its body off the ground.

A black mamba mainly uses its eyesight to notice movement. One South African reference calls it shy but highly alert, with keen eyesight, and it has no external ears, but it is good at detecting vibrations in the ground. It flicks out its tongue to collect particles from the air, and then places them in an organ in its mouth called the vomeronasal organ.

A black mamba is active from a few hours after sunrise until approximately an hour before dusk, and it returns to its refuge by late afternoon, and it spends much of its time basking in the sun, often early in the morning. It seeks out holes underground, among rocks or under old tree stumps, and these holes are often shared with members of the same or other species. It rests in hollow trees and empty termite mounds, and it also has a permanent lair that it comes back to.

Black mambas consume small animals such as rats and birds. They also eat dassies, which are also called hyraxes, and by eating small rodents, black mambas help keep the number of rodents down.

The black mamba is the longest venomous snake in Africa. Its venom is neurotoxic, which means it acts on the nervous system, and in 2015 researchers described the venom proteome, the full set of proteins, of black mambas from Eastern Africa for the first time. They described two main kinds of toxin that work together, alpha-neurotoxins and dendrotoxins. A 2017 review counted 360 species of Elapidae and found that the venom makeup had been studied in 42 of them, which is 12 percent.

The team that found mambalgins began by searching animal venoms for chemicals that could block acid-sensing ion channels, called ASICs. In 2012 French researchers reported painkilling proteins from black mamba venom and named them mambalgins.

As of November 2026, black mambas are widespread and are not endangered, and the IUCN Red List rates the black mamba as Least Concern. National Geographic lists its population trend as Stable, as of November 2026.

Black mambas mate in the warm months, in spring or summer, and they breed once a year, and a mother black mamba lays eggs, and the eggs take approximately 2 to 3 months to hatch. A hatching black mamba breaks through its egg with an egg tooth. Young black mambas get no help from their parents, and after hatching they look after themselves. The longest recorded life of a captive black mamba was 11 years, as of November 2026. Wild snakes could live longer.

Words to know

• undulation: wavy movement
• vomeronasal: smell organ
• Elapidae: snake family
• neurotoxic: harming nerves
• proteome: all proteins
• mambalgins: painkilling proteins