All Angles Creatures
Squamata · GekkonidaeEntry 4,645 of 21,572

Reptilia · Squamata

Cnemaspis kotagamaiKarunarathna, de Silva, Botejue, Surasinghe, Wickramasinghe, Ukuwela, Bauer, 2019

Kotagama’s Day Gecko

No photograph of this species exists under a license anyone may reuse. It gets the same page regardless.

A rock-dwelling, day-active gecko from the Oriental region, reaching 33 mm snout to vent.

ReptiliaSquamataGekkonidaeCnemaspis

Grows to
32.6mm
greatest recorded
Active
Diurnal
Lives
Saxicolous
Body length across Gekkonidae

Longer than only 7% of all geckos anyone has measured.

7% of 1,580 species are smaller93% larger
23 mmthe whole family, smallest to largest220 mm

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 23 to 220 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

18 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

The animal itself

Limbs
Four legs
Venomous
No
Fangs
None

Size

Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
32.6mm1.25 in

Shai Meiri, unpublished

Length snout to vent · adult female mean
32.6mm1.25 in

How it lives

Active
Diurnal

inferred from Karunarathna et al. 2019

Where it lives
Saxicolous

"in a granite cave on vertical surfaces," (Karunarathna et al. 2019)

Region
Oriental
Mainland or island
Found only on islands
Elevation · above sea level
120–140m

127-132 (Karunarathna et al. 2019)

Naming and history

Suborder
Sauria
Infraorder
Gekkota
Subspecies
No
Described by
Karunarathna, de Silva, Botejue, Surasinghe, Wickramasinghe, Ukuwela, Bauer
Moved to another genus · since it was first described
No
Described in
2019
Type locality
Sri Lanka

Keeping one

5 in × 5 in × 3.25 in(13 × 13 × 8 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.

Lives on rock, so stable hard surfaces and basking ledges suit it.

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 1.25 in (32.6 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 Kotagama’s Day Gecko. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.

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 female · snout to vent
  • 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 · greatest
  • 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
  • Diet
  • Eats arthropods
  • Eats vertebrates
  • Eats plant matter
  • How it hunts
  • Reproduction
  • How the young develop
  • Gestation or incubation
  • Average clutch
  • Smallest clutch recorded
  • Largest clutch recorded
  • Mean clutch · smallest reported
  • Mean clutch · largest reported
  • Clutches in a year
  • Clutches a year · fewest
  • Clutches a year · most
  • First breeds from · youngest recorded
  • First breeds by · oldest recorded
  • 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
  • Conservation status
  • Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
  • Population trend
  • Red List criteria
  • Biome
  • Active season · shortest recorded
  • Active season · longest recorded
  • Density · lowest recorded
  • Density · highest recorded
  • Home range · largest recorded
  • Habitat
  • Active in
  • Range size

Others in Gekkonidae

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). Cnemaspis kotagamai. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/cnemaspis-kotagamai

@misc{cnemaspis_kotagamai_2026,
  title  = {Cnemaspis kotagamai},
  author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/cnemaspis-kotagamai}
}

Sources

  1. Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
  2. Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
  3. Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.