The Zhoushan cobra has a wide range of diets, mainly frogs and snakes, followed by birds and rats, and also eats lizards, loaches, eels and other small fish.

Zhoushan cobras like to live in coastal lowlands to plains, hills and mountains with an altitude of about 1700m. Bushes, bamboo forests, streams or banks of ponds, rice fields, roadsides, suburban areas, and even into gardens or houses. Activity is seen both day and night.