Common adder

Where does the common adder live?

Home: in bogs, heaths and sunny forest edges.

In the wild it lives in these countries: the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Poland, Russia, France.

Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.

The short profile

Fully grown: about 60 cm, up to 90 cm. It weighs about 0.1 kilograms. On the menu: meat.

The story behind it

An adder is easy to recognise by the dark zigzag band running the whole length of its back. Males are usually pale grey with a black pattern, females browner with a darker brown one, and both are about sixty centimetres long. In Scandinavia adders live north of the Arctic Circle, further north than any other snake in the world, and they get through the long winter asleep in frost-free holes underground, sometimes many together. On the first mild days of spring they lie in the sun to warm up, because a snake can only move quickly once it is warm. Adders hunt voles, mice, lizards and frogs, and they use their venom to catch prey, not to defend themselves. They almost always slide away when they notice a person, and bites happen mainly when somebody picks one up or steps on it. Unlike most snakes the female lays no eggs: she carries them inside her and gives birth to three to twenty tiny live young at the end of summer.

Find it on the globe

Common adder is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.