Reptilia · Squamata
Chioninia cocteiDuméril & Bibron, 1839
Bibron’s Skink
Photograph by J. Terrier, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, plant-eating skink from the Afrotropic region, reaching 380 mm snout to vent.
Also called Cape Verde Giant Skink.
Once published as Macroscincus coctei — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Chioninia
- Grows to
- 380mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 16years
Longer than 100% 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
32 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
- Extinct
- Conservation status
- Extinct
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2012
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 16years
Carey and Judge 2000 say 8.9, 16 (Andreone and Guarino 2003; Jesus 2012, also cited in Bohme et al. 2022)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 380mm15 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 254.3mm10 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 254.3mm10 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 77mm3 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 1405.5g3.1 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 542g1.2 lb
Pinho et al. 2022 (max 380 mm citing Bocage 1873)
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
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Found only on islands
- Range size
- 47.6km²
Omnivorous, mainly Herbivorous (Andreone and Guarino 2003), "this species would prey on seabirds’ eggs and insects" (Pinho et al. 2022 - and omnivorous - plants and arthropods, according to their data, and "reports mentioned a commensal and predatory link with endemic seabirds such as the Cabo Verde shearwater Calonectris edwardsii")
(based on records of activity both day and night, Aaron Bauer, pers. comm. Dec 2013, IUCN 2014, Rodda 2020), "Nocturnal or crepuscular according to Vaillant [49]" (Pinho et al. 2022), "In regard of the daily activity, there are observations on a both diurnal and nocturnal activity pattern in C. coctei. While Alexander (1898) observed the lizards basking on flat places of the rocky slopes, an old native shepherd told one of us (HS: Schleich 1982) that he saw the lizards – many years ago – being active at night, a phenomenon corroborated by observing captive specimens (Vaillant 1882, Peracca 1891b)." (Bohme et al. 2022)
Terrestrial, see discussion if possible arboreality and saxicolous habits in Bohme et al. 2022
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 2eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2eggs
- First breeds at
- 72months
e.g., Andreone and Gavetti 1998, Bohme et al. 2022
(IUCN 2014), "females normally laid two eggs per clutch" (Pinho et al. 2022 citing Andreone and Guarino 2003)
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
- Cape Verde
Keeping one
Bibron’s Skink is assessed as Extinct on the IUCN Red List. No living animal is known. Anything below describes what was recorded of the species while it existed, and it is here because a reference that quietly drops a species it has lost is a worse record than one that keeps it.
No enclosure size, temperature or feeding figure is given for this species. What is recorded about the animal stays on this page above; advice on keeping one does not, because there is none to keep.
Feeding
Prey size does not apply. A herbivore's diet is judged on fibre, on the ratio of calcium to phosphorus, and on avoiding plants high in oxalates.
The animal does not take prey items. This is established practice, not a measurement.
123kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 1,406 g, the heaviest recorded for Bibron’s 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 · 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 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
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Habitat
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest 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). Chioninia coctei. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chioninia-coctei
@misc{chioninia_coctei_2026,
title = {Chioninia coctei},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chioninia-coctei}
}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.