The scales have light-colored keels and sometimes yellow tips that form a series of 30 or more light crossbands or chevrons.

The belly is yellow or dull to pale olive; it may be uniform in color, or heavily mottled with blackish spots.

The tail has a conspicuous ivory white tip, 7 to 12 mm long, extending back over 10 subcaudals.

A. squamigera is viviparous, and a single successful pairing can produce up to 19 neonates, although the average is 7–9.

[9] The diet of Atheris squamigera consists primarily of small mammals, although cases of cannibalism within the species have been documented.

[10] A. squamigera is a nocturnal hunter and its coloring allows it to blend in with its environment and ambush the small prey it feeds on.

It is equipped with two front hollow fangs through which it injects its prey with hemotoxic venom rendering it defenseless.

[14] Atheris squamigera is found in the forest habitats of West and central Africa: from Ghana eastward to western Kenya and Tanzania, south to northern Angola and Bioko Island.

Scientists believe that the current pattern of dispersal is of the Atheris species, including that of the A. squamigera may have been influenced by a combination of past climatic events, geological activities, the shifting of tectonic plates over millions of years, as well as stochastic dispersal.

[15] Atheris squamigera inhabits mostly rainforest, preferring relatively low and thick flowering bushes.

[3] Bites from Atheris squamigera have resulted in at least one report of severe hematological complications[16] as well as two deaths.

These include:[2][3][4] Furthermore, specimens from Dimonika and Menengue in Congo are sometimes treated as a separate species: A. laeviceps.