Reptilia · Squamata
Ameiva ameivaLinnaeus, 1758
Giant Ameiva
Photograph by Sandra H Statner, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating lizard from the Neotropic region, reaching 210 mm snout to vent.
Also called Amazon Racerunner, Neotropical Ameiva.
Once published as Ameiva aquilina — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Teiidae › Ameiva
- Grows to
- 210mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 4.6years
Longer than 89% of all species in Teiidae 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 52.4 to 614 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
48 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
- 2014
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 4.6years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 29.2°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 37.75°C100 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 36.1–39.4°C97–103 °F
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009, Slavens and Slavens 1999: 4 and 7 months
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 210mm8.25 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 118.9mm4.75 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 118.9mm4.75 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 39.1mm1.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 39.1mm1.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 298.6g10.5 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 68g2.4 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 1.6g0.06 oz
max 210 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016)
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Savanna, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1180m
- Range size
- 12,706,250km²
- Density
- 4.6–460per hectare
- Home range · largest recorded
- 648m2
Invertebrates, lizards and some vegetable matter (Avila-Pires 1995, Mesquita et al. 2006), vertebrates and Arthropods (Vitt and de Carvalho 1995), about 1% plants, 2.5 percent mollusks and earthworms, 7.5% vertebrates and the rest Arthropods (Pianka and Vitt 2003, p43), 3.5% plants (Mesquita et al. 2006b), omnivorous (Janzen 1973, Quinn et al. 2010, Henderson and Powell 2018 for aquilina), see also Sales et al. 2011, Powell and Henderson 2017 (as Ameiva aquilina); insects, almost all isoptera (Travassos et al. 2015, see also de Amorim et al. 2017)
e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016, Quinn et al. 2010, Henderson and Powell 2018, Fenker et al. 2020
e.g., Pianka et al. 2017, Henderson and Powell 2018, Benicio et al. 2019, Fenker et al. 2020, Uchoa et al. 2022
Terrestrial and Leaf Litter (e.g., Vitt and de Carvalho 1995, Benicio et al. 2019), terrestrial (Fenker et al. 2020, Uchoa et al. 2022)
600 (Moraes et al. 2017), 0-1180 (e.g., Senaris and Rojas-Runjaic 2020), near sea level to 700 (Leenders 2019), 5-1105 (Uchoa et al. 2022)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Gestation or incubation
- 152days
- Average clutch
- 5.25eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–11eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2.5–8eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 2.5per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–3per year
- First breeds at
- 6months
- Age at first breeding · female
- 244days
1-11 (Vitt et al. 2008), means 2.5-8 (Mesquita et al. 2016), 2-8 (McCrystal and Behler 1982), 6 (Fenker et al. 2020), 1-9 (Uchoa et al. 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Laterata
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1758
- Type locality
- Suriname
Keeping one
2 ft 9 in × 2 ft 9 in × 20.5 in(84 × 84 × 53 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.
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 8.25 in (210 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 85 °F (29.2 °C).
Preferred body temperature, recorded in a laboratory gradient where the animal could choose freely. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
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.
31kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 299 g, the heaviest recorded for Giant Ameiva — 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 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 · adult female, mean
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Teiidae
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). Ameiva ameiva. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ameiva-ameiva
@misc{ameiva_ameiva_2026,
title = {Ameiva ameiva},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ameiva-ameiva}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.