Reptilia · Squamata
Chalcides mauritanicusDuméril & Bibron, 1839
Cylindrical Skink
Photograph by Pacolopeh, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A burrowing, day-active, meat-eating skink from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 83 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Chalcides
- Grows to
- 83mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives
- Fossorial
Longer than 62% 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
35 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
- 2008
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- B1ab(iii)
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Reduced
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 83mm3.25 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 74.8mm3 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 74.8mm3 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 36mm1.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 36mm1.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 3.99g0.14 oz
Shai Meiri, unpublished
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
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Fossorial
- Biome
- Mediterranean
- Active season · months of the year
- 6months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 140m
- Range size
- 4311km²
arthropods (mostly beetle Larvae, Martin et al. 2015)
difficult to observe but on the surface only during the day (Scleich et al. 1996)
Sand Swimming (e.g., del Marmol et al. 2019)/fossorial (Martin et al. 2015, Martin et al. 2017), "Martin et al. (2015) never observed a skink above the soil surface. After 10 years of keep-ing them, I must conclude that one rarely sees them above the sand." (Bogaerts 2020)
0-140 (Bogaerts 2020, del Marmol et al. 2019)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 2.5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–3eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2.5eggs
- First breeds at
- 12months
Bogaerts 2020, also inferred from Martin et al. 2015 who write "The relatively low proportion of juveniles in the population would suggest small litter sizes"
midpoint of the reported range — Meiri, 2024, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 33:e13812
2-3 (Bogaerts 2020; n=2, also cited in Kalboussi 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Duméril & Bibron
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1839
- Type locality
- Algeria
Keeping one
Cylindrical Skink 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.
13 in × 13 in × 8.25 in(33 × 33 × 21 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 1.75 in (4 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 3.25 in (83 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.
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 4 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 · 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
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Clutches in a year
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — 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
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Habitat
- — 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 mauritanicus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chalcides-mauritanicus
@misc{chalcides_mauritanicus_2026,
title = {Chalcides mauritanicus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chalcides-mauritanicus}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.