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Squamata · ChamaeleonidaeEntry 3,489 of 21,572
Midlands Dwarf Chameleon, Bradypodion thamnobates

Reptilia · Squamata

Bradypodion thamnobatesRaw, 1976

Midlands Dwarf Chameleon

Photograph by Dylan Leonard, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist

A tree-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating chameleon from the Afrotropic region, reaching 103 mm snout to vent.

Also called Natal Midlands Dwarf Chameleon.

Reptilia › Squamata › Chamaeleonidae › Bradypodion

Grows to
103mm
greatest recorded
Eats
Carnivorous
Active
Diurnal
Lives up to
2.3years
Body length across Chamaeleonidae

Longer than 71% of all chameleons anyone has measured.

71% of 227 species are smaller29% larger
18.2 mmthe whole family, smallest to largest300 mm

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 18.2 to 300 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

37 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
Endangered
Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
2021
Population trend
Decreasing
Red List criteria
B1ab(ii,iii,v)

The animal itself

Limbs
Four legs
Venomous
No
Fangs
None
Longest recorded life
2.3years

Slavens and Slavens 1999

Size

Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
103mm4 in

max 103 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016)

Length snout to vent · adult female mean
67.3mm2.75 in
Largest female · snout to vent
67.4mm2.75 in

snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length

Hatchling length · snout to vent
22.5mm0.9 in
Body mass · greatestcomputed
21.97g0.78 oz

computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed

Body mass at hatchingmeasured
0.27g0.01 oz

How it lives

Diet
Carnivorous

include plants in its diet (Necas 1999), carnivorous (Aaron Bauer, pers. comm. December 2013), invertebrates, negligible plant amount (Da Silva et al. 2016, appendix), Dollion et al. 2017 report prey size

Active
Diurnal
Where it lives
Arboreal
Habitat
Forest
Biome
Montane Grasslands & Savannas
Region
Afrotropic
Mainland or island
Mainland
Elevation · above sea level
850–1600m
Range size
17,252km²

Breeding

Reproduction
Viviparous
Average clutch
19eggs
Eggs or young per clutch
7–31eggs

7-20 (LeBerre et al. 2000), 8-20 (Branch 2016), 8-31 (Reissig and Tiedemann 2018)

Clutches in a year
1.5per year
Clutches a year
1–2per year
First breeds at
3–12months

Naming and history

Suborder
Sauria
Infraorder
Acrodontia
Subspecies
No
Described by
Raw
Moved to another genus · since it was first described
No
Described in
1976
Type locality
South Africa

Keeping one

Midlands Dwarf Chameleon is assessed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.

16 in × 10 in × 16 in(41 × 26 × 41 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 4 in (103 mm), at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.

No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Midlands Dwarf Chameleon. 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.

3kJ per day

Worked out for an animal of 22 g, the heaviest recorded for Midlands Dwarf Chameleon — 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 · snout to vent
  • — Largest juvenile · shell length
  • — Egg length
  • — Egg width
  • — Body mass · a typical adult
  • — 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 it hunts
  • — How the young develop
  • — Gestation or incubation
  • — Mean clutch · smallest reported
  • — Mean clutch · largest reported
  • — 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
  • — Active season · shortest recorded
  • — Active season · longest recorded
  • — Density · lowest recorded
  • — Density · highest recorded
  • — Home range · largest recorded
  • — Active in

Others in Chamaeleonidae

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). Bradypodion thamnobates. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/bradypodion-thamnobates

@misc{bradypodion_thamnobates_2026,
  title  = {Bradypodion thamnobates},
  author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/bradypodion-thamnobates}
}

Sources

  1. Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
  2. Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
  3. Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.