Reptilia · Squamata
Anolis carolinensisVoigt, 1832
Green anole
Photograph by Paul Hirst (Phirst), CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A tree-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating lizard from the Nearctic region, reaching 75 mm snout to vent.
Also called North American Green Anole.
Reptilia › Squamata › Anolidae › Anolis
- Grows to
- 75mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 11years
Longer than 65% of all species in Anolidae 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 33.5 to 191 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
49 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
- 2015
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 11years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 31–36.3°C88–97 °F
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 28.2°C83 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 22.2–34.2°C72–94 °F
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009: 7.2, Slavens and Slavens 1999; Petzold 2008: 11
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 75mm3 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 49.3mm2 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 49.3mm2 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 21.75mm0.9 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 21.8mm0.9 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 8.76g0.31 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 2.46g0.09 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.15g0.01 oz
max 75 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
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest, Shrubland, Wetlands
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 10m
- Range size
- 1,275,192km²
- Density
- 130–1420per hectare
- Home range · largest recorded
- 51m2
arthropods (occasionally fruit and flowers, Hodge et al. 2003)
(mostly, Losos 2009 p149-150), sit and wait (e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016)
e.g., Heimes 2022
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, XX/XY
- Gestation or incubation
- 42days
- Average clutch
- 1.15eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 1–1.3eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 10.5per year
- Clutches a year
- 6–15per year
- First breeds at
- 4–12months
- Age at first breeding · female
- 259days
1 (Zug 2013, Hibbitts and Hibbitts 2015, Heimes 2022), mean 1.3 (e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Pleurodonta
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Voigt
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1832
- Type locality
- USA
Keeping one
12 in × 7.5 in × 12 in(30 × 19 × 30 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Lives in vegetation, so height and climbing structure matter more than floor space.
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 3 in (75 mm), at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 88–97 °F (31–36.3 °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.
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 9 g, the heaviest recorded for Green anole — 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.
Morphs
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 1 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- Green and brownbreeder consensus
The same animal, at different times. Green when warm, settled and displaying; brown when cold, stressed or subordinate.
Worth knowing. A brown green anole is not a different animal or a different morph — it is a cold or stressed one, and it will turn green again. An anole kept permanently brown is usually being kept too cold or is under stress from a tank-mate, so the colour is worth reading as information about husbandry rather than about the lizard's identity.
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
- — Red List criteria
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Anolidae
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). Anolis carolinensis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/anolis-carolinensis
@misc{anolis_carolinensis_2026,
title = {Anolis carolinensis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/anolis-carolinensis}
}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.