Reptilia · Squamata
Chalcides chalcidesLinnaeus, 1758
Cylindrical Skink
Identification not confirmed. One observer recorded this animal as this species and no one has since agreed, so the photograph may show a different animal.
Photograph by Kozue Kawakami, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating skink from the Palearctic region, reaching 210 mm snout to vent.
Also called Italian Three-toed Skink.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Chalcides
- Grows to
- 210mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 4years
Longer than 97% of all skinks 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 24 to 500 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
40 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
- 2008
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Reduced
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 4years
Guarino 2010: 4
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 210mm8.25 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 141.7mm5.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 141.7mm5.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 45mm1.75 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 45mm1.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 41.38g1.5 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 5.44g0.19 oz
max 210 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
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Fossorial, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Shrubland, Wetlands
- Biome
- Mediterranean
- Active season · months of the year
- 6months
- Region
- Palearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2080m
- Range size
- 241,762km²
- Density
- 77–2180per hectare
invertebrates (Street 1979), arthropods (mostly spiders and hemipterans Ciraci et al. 2022, Lo Cascio 2022),
Cathemeral/diurnal (Speybroeck et al. 2016)
Leaf Litter and semi fossorial / leaf litter (Greer et al. 1998) / surface active (Shine and Wall 2008)
max 1300 (Speybroeck et al. 2016), max 1600 (Kwet 2015), 0-2077 (De Vivo et al. 2021)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 7.4eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 3–19eggs
- Mean clutch
- 5.9–7.8eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
- First breeds at
- 21months
3-19, mean 7.8 (Caputo et al. 2000 also cited in Kalboussi 2022), 4-18 (Kwet 2015), 4-9 mean 5.9 (Ruggiero cited in Kalboussi 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- Chalcides chalcides chalcides (LINNAEUS 1758) Chalcides chalcides vittatus (LEUCKART 1828)
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1758
- Type locality
- Europa australi, Africa
Keeping one
2 ft 9 in × 2 ft 9 in × 20.5 in(84 × 84 × 53 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 4.25 in (11 cm) deep.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
Burrows, so substrate deep enough to dig in matters as much as floor area.
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 8.25 in (210 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Cylindrical Skink. 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.
5kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 41 g, the heaviest recorded for Cylindrical Skink — 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 · a typical adult
- — Body mass at hatching
- — 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
- — 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
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Scincidae
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). Chalcides chalcides. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chalcides-chalcides
@misc{chalcides_chalcides_2026,
title = {Chalcides chalcides},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chalcides-chalcides}
}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.