Amphibia · Gymnophiona
Caecilia mertensiTaylor, 1973
Mertens' Caecilian
No photograph of this species exists under a license anyone may reuse. It gets the same page regardless.
A caecilian reaching 495 mm nose to tail.
Also called Villa Tunari Caecilian.
Amphibia › Gymnophiona › Caeciliidae › Caecilia
Longer than only 27% of all species in Caeciliidae 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 334 to 1,520 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
11 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
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 495mm19.5 in
- Female length · mean, nose to tail
- 495mm19.5 in
total length, tail included — this source reports total length for Caudata and Gymnophiona
mean adult female total length, tail included
How it lives
- Eats arthropods
- Unknown
- Eats vertebrates
- Unknown
- Eats plant matter
- Unknown
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- How the young develop
- Straight to a miniature adult
Naming and history
- Described by
- Taylor
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1973
Keeping one
No enclosure size is given here
Swiss law sets amphibian enclosure sizes family by family, and this family is not among the ones its table names. No figure is given rather than one borrowed from a different kind of animal.
Swiss Tierschutzverordnung (TSchV), SR 455.1, Anhang 2, Tabelle 6 — legally binding minimum enclosure sizes for amphibians, given as multiples of total body length and stated for two animals.
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.
- — Still living
- — Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- — Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — 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 · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · greatest
- — 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
- — Diet
- — How it hunts
- — Active
- — Where it lives
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Average clutch
- — Smallest clutch recorded
- — Largest clutch recorded
- — 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
- — Venomous
- — Fangs
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Limbs
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Region
- — Biome
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Suborder
- — Infraorder
- — Subspecies
- — Type locality
- — Habitat
- — Active in
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Caeciliidae
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). Caecilia mertensi. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/caecilia-mertensi
@misc{caecilia_mertensi_2026,
title = {Caecilia mertensi},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/caecilia-mertensi}
}Sources
- GBIF Secretariat. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Used under CC BY 4.0. Common names aggregated from constituent checklists.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Oliveira, B.F. et al. (2017). AmphiBIO, a global database for amphibian ecological traits. Scientific Data 4:170123. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Huang, N. et al. (2023). Amphibian traits database: a global database on morphological traits of amphibians. Global Ecology and Biogeography 32, 633-641. Used under CC BY 4.0.