Reptilia · Squamata
Anolis cuvieriMerrem, 1820
Cuvier's Anole
Photograph placed in the public domain, CC0, via iNaturalist
A day-active, omnivorous lizard from the Neotropic region, reaching 180 mm snout to vent.
Also called Green Giant Anole, Puerto Rican giant anole.
Once published as Xiphosurus cuvieri — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Anolidae › Anolis
- Grows to
- 180mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 9.3years
Longer than 98% 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
38 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
- 9.3years
Slavens and Slavens 1999, Henderson & Powell 2009: 9 and 3 months in captivity
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 180mm7 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 119.5mm4.75 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 119.5mm4.75 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 42.3mm1.75 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 42.3mm1.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 115.1g4.1 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 46.6g1.6 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 1.87g0.07 oz
max 180 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
- Omnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Found only on islands
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1200m
- Range size
- 3891km²
- Density
- 1.33–74per hectare
- Home range · largest recorded
- 325.8m2
invertebrates and vertebrates (Greene 1982, Schwartz and Henderson 1991) also "said to eat berries and fruit (Schwartz and Henderson 1991, Herrel et al. 2004), Anolis lizards (Henderson and Powell 2009)
Sit and Wait
Arboreal&Terrestrial (Henderson and Powell 2009)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 1eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1eggs
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Pleurodonta
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Merrem
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1820
- Type locality
- Puerto Rico
Keeping one
2 ft 4 in × 2 ft 4 in × 2 ft 4 in(72 × 72 × 72 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 and climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Recorded both on the ground and climbing, so this is the larger of the two rules in every dimension.
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 7 in (180 mm), at 4 × 4 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Cuvier's Anole. 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.
13kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 115 g, the heaviest recorded for Cuvier's 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.
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
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — 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
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — 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
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — 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 cuvieri. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/anolis-cuvieri
@misc{anolis_cuvieri_2026,
title = {Anolis cuvieri},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/anolis-cuvieri}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- 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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.