Reptilia · Squamata
Calotes versicolorDaudin, 1802
Bloodsucker
Photograph by Devika M B, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A day-active, omnivorous lizard from the Oriental region, reaching 150 mm snout to vent.
Also called Changeable lizard, Common Garden Lizard, Eastern Garden Lizard.
Reptilia › Squamata › Agamidae › Calotes
- Grows to
- 150mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 5years
Longer than 85% of all agamids 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 32 to 418 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
46 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
- 2019
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 5years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 33.1°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 30.85°C88 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 25.6–36.1°C78–97 °F
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009: 5, Castanet 1994, Cicek et al. 2012: 4
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 150mm6 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 86.2mm3.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 86.8mm3.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 23.2mm0.9 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 23.2mm0.9 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 117.7g4.2 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 20.04g0.71 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.43g0.02 oz
max 150 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, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 3200m
- Range size
- 6,740,636km²
- Density
- 48–49per hectare
Arthropods and small vertebrates (see list in, e.g., Somaweera and Somaweera 2009, Sudasinghe and Somaweera 2015, Kastle et al. 2013), plus vegetable matter and maybe carrion (Tikader and Sharma 1992, Deraniyagala 1953, Vinson and Vinson 1969), mostly arthropods, also birds and frogs (Murthy 1995), invertebrate and "some plant matter (Das and de Silva 2011), invertebrates, seeds and other plant matter (Vassilieva et al. 2016), insects (de Silva and Ukuwela 2017), nectar (Khandakar et al. 2020)
e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016, Kastle et al. 2013
Diurnal and Crepuscular / Diurnal (e.g., Das and Bhattacharjee 2005, de Silva and Ukuwela 2017, Pal et al. 2018, Kamali 2020, Jenssen and Sy 2022), heliophile (Vassilieva et al. 2016)
Arboreal and Terrestrial (e.g., Das and Bhattacharjee 2005) / Arboreal (e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016, de Silva and Ukuwela 2017, Prasad et al. 2018, Gray et al. 2019, Kamali 2020)/semi arboreal (Vassilieva et al. 2016)/semi arboreal and arboreal (Pal et al. 2018), juveniles more terrestrial, adults more arboreal (Jenssen and Sy 2022)
0-1200 (Srinivasulu et al. 2014), up to 3000 (Vassilieva et al. 2016), to 1600 in Nepal (Nanhoe and Ouboter 1987), to 2300m (Kastle et al. 2013), 0-1000 (de Silva and Ukuwela 2017), 100-3200 (Gautam et al. 2020)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, either system
- Average clutch
- 13.65eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–33eggs
- Mean clutch
- 7.3–20eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 2.5per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–4per year
- First breeds at
- 6–12months
7-33 (Pandav et al. 2010), 11-23 (Gardner 2013), mean 15 (Mesquita et al. 2016), 7 (n=1, Sumarli et al. 2015), 7-19 (Srinivasulu et al. 2014), 4-12 (Vassilieva et al. 2016), about 12 (de Silva and Ukuwela 2017), 6-23 (Das and Das 2017), 9 (Parmar 2020; n=1), 6 (Deb and Sengupta 2020, n = 1), mean 20 (Liang et al. 2021), max 33 (Jenssen and Sy 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Acrodontia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Daudin
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1802
- Type locality
- India
Keeping one
23.5 in × 23.5 in × 23.5 in(60 × 60 × 60 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 6 in (150 mm), at 4 × 4 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 92 °F (33.1 °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.
14kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 118 g, the heaviest recorded for Bloodsucker — 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
- — Gestation or incubation
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Red List criteria
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Agamidae
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). Calotes versicolor. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/calotes-versicolor
@misc{calotes_versicolor_2026,
title = {Calotes versicolor},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/calotes-versicolor}
}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.