Reptilia · Squamata
Ablepharus alaicusElpatjevsky, 1901
Alai ground skink
Photograph by Kudaibergen Amirekul, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
A day-active, meat-eating skink from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 65 mm snout to vent.
Once published as Asymblepharus alaicus — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Ablepharus
- Grows to
- 65mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives
- Saxicolous, terrestrial
Longer than only 40% of all skinks anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 24 to 500 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
31 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2018
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 65mm2.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 51.9mm2 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 22.1mm0.9 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 22.1mm0.9 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 5.5g0.19 oz
max 65 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016)
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Saxicolous, terrestrial
- Biome
- Montane Grasslands & Savannas
- Active season · months of the year
- 7–8months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 700–4000m
- Range size
- 397,823km²
Arthropods ("insects (beetles, flies, and ants) and spiders." Szczerbak 2003)
Szczerbak 2003
Saxicolous and terrestrial inferred from Szczerbak 2003
700-3100 or 3960 (Dujsebayeva 2015), 800-4000 (Showler 2018, citing Szczerbak 2003)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 4.5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–7eggs
- First breeds at
- 24months
ovoviviparous., Szczerbak 2003
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
3 (Greer 2007, n=1)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- Ablepharus alaicus kucenkoi NIKOLSKY 1902 Ablepharus alaicus alaicus ELPATJEVSKY 1901 Ablepharus alaicus yakovlevae (EREMCHENKO 1983)
- Described by
- Elpatjevsky
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1901
- Type locality
- Kyrgyzstan
Keeping one
10 in × 10 in × 6.5 in(26 × 26 × 16 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
Lives on rock, so stable hard surfaces and basking ledges suit it.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length of 2.5 in (65 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Alai ground skink. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 6 g, the heaviest recorded for Alai ground skink — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Longest recorded life
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches in a year
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Habitat
- — Active in
Others in Scincidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Ablepharus alaicus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ablepharus-alaicus
@misc{ablepharus_alaicus_2026,
title = {Ablepharus alaicus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ablepharus-alaicus}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.