Reptilia · Squamata
Chalcides ocellatusForskål, 1775
Ocellated (Bronze) Skink
Photograph by Riccardo Rocca, CC BY, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, omnivorous skink from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 160 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Chalcides
- Grows to
- 159.8mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 14years
Longer than 94% 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
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
- 2016
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 14years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 31.8°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 32.25°C90 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 26.9–34.1°C80–93 °F
Schleich et al. 1996, captivity, Carey and Judge 2000, Amitai and Bouskila 2001: 13; Slavens and Slavens 1999: 14, TAUM museum records: : 8.18, Hauschild and Gassner 1995: 10 in captivity, 8.5 (Foufopoulos and Ives 1999), Mermer et al. 2020 (max 10 - nature)
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 159.8mm6.25 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 96.5mm3.75 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 109.4mm4.25 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 37mm1.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 37mm1.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 92.71g3.3 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 39.1g1.4 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 32.16g1.1 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.76g0.03 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Shai Meiri, unpublished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
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Omnivorous
- How it hunts
- Mixed
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Cryptic
- Habitat
- Caves, Grassland, Rocky, Savanna, Shrubland, Subterranean, Wetlands
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 7–12months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2500m
- Range size
- 9,309,964km²
- Density
- 30–2500per hectare
invertebrates: Arthropods, some plant material (e.g., Arnold 1980 p324, Schleich et al. 1996, p77), snails and arthropods (Valakos et al. 2008, Werner 2016), omnivorous - also Podarcis filfolensis (Carretero et al. 2010), see Kalboussi and Nouira 2004, Delaugerre et al. 2012: falcon prey scraps, Gardner 2013: INSECTS, SMALL GECKOS AND MAY TAKE SOME PLANTS, (94% insects, the rest ofther arthropods, plants reported in the literature (Cicek and Gocmen 2013), insects (Schleich 1987), Mesalina juvenile (Slavenko et al. 2018), mostly beetles, suspects vegetation and seeds intentionally ingested (Attum et al. 2004), arthropods and small geckos (Carranza et al. 2021)
Active foraging (e.g., Gardner 2013, Werner 2016, Carranza et al. 2021) / Sit and Wait (Delaugerre et al. 2012)
Diurnal and crepuscular (e.g., Schleich 1987, Werner 2016)/ cathemeral (Schatti and Desvoignes 1999)/crepuscular (Attum et al. 2007) / "diurnal in habit, but when it is hot it is more active at night." (Szczerbak 2003), mainly diurnal (del Marmol et al. 2019), I rarely observed them out of cover (and very often under), and when I did it was mostly after last light; diurnal (Carranza et al. 2021)
Terrestrial (e.g., Carranza et al. 2021)/ Leaf Litter & semi fossorial (e.g., pers. obs. and Masood and Asiry 2012, Werner 2016) / Cryptic and leaf litter (pers. Obs.)
0-1500 (Speybroeck et al. 2016, del Marmol et al. 2019), max 2500 in N. Africa (Kwet 2015, also Kamali 2020), 368.4 below sea level to 1630 above (SM pers. Obs), 0-600 (Carranza et al. 2021), max 1700 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 6.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–20eggs
- Mean clutch
- 3–4.2eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1.5per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–2per year
- First breeds at
- 20–36months
e.g., Itescu et al. 2016, del Marmol et al. 2019
Bogaerts 2006 / 3-10 (Bar and Haimovitch 2012, Spawls et al. 2023), 2-6, mean 4 (Caputo et al. 2000), 4-6 (Gardner 2013), Goldberg 2014 (3.8 ±0.96 SD, range = 3–5. but 2-20 in 13 literature studies), Szczerbak 2003: 4-5, Werner 1995 (mean 4.2), Werner 2016 (typically 4-8, but 1-6 in an actual sample, mean 4.2), Itescu et al. 2016 (5, n=1), 2-20 (Speybroeck et al. 2016), 1-6, mean 3 (TAU experimental zoo data), 2-20 (del Marmol et al. 2019), 2-6 (Carranza et al. 2021), 2-7, mean 4.18 (Akef 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- Chalcides ocellatus ocellatus (FORSKAL 1775) Chalcides ocellatus tiligugu (GMELIN 1789) Chalcides ocellatus linosae BOULENGER 1920 Chalcides ocellatus sacchii LANZA 1954 Chalcides ocellatus subtypicus WERNER 1931 Chalcides ocellatus zavattarii LANZA 1954
- Described by
- Forskål
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1775
- Type locality
- Egypt
Keeping one
2 ft 1 in × 2 ft 1 in × 15.5 in(64 × 64 × 40 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
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 6.25 in (159.8 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 89 °F (31.8 °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.
11kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 93 g, the heaviest recorded for Ocellated (Bronze) 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
- — 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
- — 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 ocellatus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chalcides-ocellatus
@misc{chalcides_ocellatus_2026,
title = {Chalcides ocellatus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chalcides-ocellatus}
}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.