Atlas of Georgia’s reptiles

Georgia sits between the Black Sea, the Greater Caucasus, and the arid east — a short geographic span that supports vipers of high mountains and Colchic forests, water snakes of rivers and wetlands, racers of dry foothills, and a widespread legless lizard often mistaken for a snake. This atlas focuses first on well-documented reptiles of Georgia, with bilingual accounts, Georgia-specific range notes, and field photography.

Species richness here is shaped by elevation, humidity, and refuge habitats. Western Colchic landscapes favor moisture-linked snakes such as Natrix; eastern semi-arid basins hold Macrovipera lebetina and fast colubrids; alpine and subalpine belts hold Caucasus endemics including Vipera dinniki. Counts on this page reflect published profiles in the atlas and will grow as lizards, turtles, and amphibians are added with equal rigor.

Only a minority of Georgia’s snakes are medically significant. In this atlas, “venomous” means moderate or high risk to humans: the Levantine viper (Macrovipera lebetina), Caucasus viper (Vipera kaznakovi), Dinnik’s viper (Vipera dinniki), nose-horned viper (Vipera ammodytes), Darevsky’s viper (Vipera darevskii), and steppe viper (Vipera renardi). Most other snakes here — grass snake, dice snake, racers, smooth snake, cat snake — are harmless to people, though several are frequently misidentified.

Safe encounter practice is simple: do not handle wild snakes, keep distance, and learn the lookalikes common in your region. Open each profile for identification traits, habitat, and conservation status. This is educational natural-history guidance, not emergency medical advice.

Distribution in the atlas is recorded by Georgia’s administrative regions as a practical field layer — from Abkhazia and Adjara on the humid west to Kakheti and Kvemo Kartli in the dry east, plus the capital district of Tbilisi. A species may appear in several regions; endemics and elevational specialists are more narrowly placed.

Use the map to move from place to fauna, then open regional pages for habitats, safety notes, and the local species list. For research-grade occurrence data, profiles also cite databases such as GBIF and the Reptile Database alongside IUCN assessments where available.