Reptilia · Squamata
Chamaeleo gracilisHallowell, 1844
Slender chameleon
Photograph by B. Phalan, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A tree-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating chameleon from the Afrotropic region, reaching 190 mm snout to vent.
Also called Graceful Chameleon.
Once published as Chamaeleo etiennei, Chamaeleon gracilis — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Chamaeleonidae › Chamaeleo
- Grows to
- 190mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 10years
Longer than 94% of all chameleons 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 18.2 to 300 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
37 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
- 2013
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 10years
1 and 7 months (Slavens and Slavens 1999), 8-10 (Wikipedia, http://mychameleononline.com/chamaeleo-gracilis-graceful-chameleon/)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 190mm7.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 130mm5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 130mm5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 121.6g4.3 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 99g3.5 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Shai Meiri, unpublished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
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Savanna
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2000m
- Range size
- 11,115,488km²
Arthropods (e.g., Kenya Reptile Atlas (http://kenyareptileatlas.com/), invertebrates (Spawls et al. 2018, Spawls et al. 2023)
Sit-and-wait (Cavalcanti et al. 2023)
(e.g., Kenya Reptile Atlas (http://kenyareptileatlas.com/), Akani et al. 2001, Malonza and Bwong 2023)
e.g., Branch 2014, Spawls et al. 2018, Malonza and Bwong 2023
5-1900 (Ineich et al. 2015), 0-1600 (Spawls et al. 2018), 400-2000 (Malonza and Bwong 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 35eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 10–60eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1.5per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–2per year
- First breeds at
- 4–5months
20 (Loveridge 1938), 20-40 (LeBerre et al. 2000), up to 44 (Branch 2014), up to 45 but 20-30 is more usual (Kenya Reptile Atlas, sane in Spawls et al. 2018 but 44 not 45, Spawls et al. 2023), 14-23 (Akani et al. 2001, but 20-40 and one of 60 in the literature)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Acrodontia
- Subspecies
- Chamaeleo gracilis gracilis HALLOWELL 1844 Chamaeleo gracilis etiennei SCHMIDT 1919
- Described by
- Hallowell
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1844
- Type locality
- Equatorial Guinea
Keeping one
2 ft 6 in × 18.5 in × 2 ft 6 in(76 × 48 × 76 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Lives in vegetation, so height and climbing structure matter more than floor space.
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 7.5 in (190 mm), at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Slender chameleon. 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.
14kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 122 g, the heaviest recorded for Slender chameleon — 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 · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — 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 the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — 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
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Chamaeleonidae
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). Chamaeleo gracilis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chamaeleo-gracilis
@misc{chamaeleo_gracilis_2026,
title = {Chamaeleo gracilis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chamaeleo-gracilis}
}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.