Reptilia · Squamata
Corucia zebrataGray, 1855
Solomon Island Skink
Photograph by TimVickers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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A tree-dwelling, nocturnal, plant-eating skink from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 350 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Corucia
- Grows to
- 350mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 24.3years
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
43 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
- Near Threatened
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2011
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- A2d
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 24.3years
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 29.85°C86 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 29.2–30.5°C85–87 °F
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009, Slavens and Slavens 1999
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 350mm14 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 300mm12 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 300mm12 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 149mm5.75 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 149mm5.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 1085.7g2.4 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 1013.7g2.2 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 557g1.2 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 85g3 oz
max 350 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016)
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
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Found only on islands
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1000m
- Range size
- 30,522km²
(Pianka and Vitt 2003, McCoy 2015), the most Herbivorous skink (Greer 2001, p391), 100% plants (Cooper and Vitt 2002, McCoy 1980),
Nocturnal and crepuscular (Mann and Meek 2004), nocturnal (McCoy 2015)
(e.g., McCoy 2015), arboreal (Foster et al. 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 1.2eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 1–1.4eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 0.75per year
- Clutches a year
- 0.5–1per year
- First breeds at
- 24months
1-2 (Rogner 1997), Honegger 1985: 9 singletons, 6 twins, 1 rarely 2 (McCoy 2015), 1 (Whiting and While 2017)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- Corucia zebrata alfredschmidti KÖHLER 1997 Corucia zebrata zebrata GRAY 1855
- Described by
- Gray
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1855
- Type locality
- Solomon Islands
Keeping one
4 ft 7 in × 2 ft 10 in × 4 ft 7 in(140 × 88 × 140 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 14 in (350 mm), at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
Active animals measured in the wild averaged 86 °F (29.9 °C).
Mean body temperature of active individuals measured in nature. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
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.
98kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 1,086 g, the heaviest recorded for Solomon Island 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.
Morphs
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 1 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- Subspeciesbreeder consensus
How green or grey an animal is, how dark the banding, and eye colour. This follows which island population it came from rather than a gene.
Worth knowing. This species gives birth to a single live young, about a third the mother's length, after six to eight months — no eggs and no clutch. A female may produce one animal a year, which is why collection from the wild is so hard for the population to absorb, and why animals are on CITES Appendix II.
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
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — 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
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — 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). Corucia zebrata. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/corucia-zebrata
@misc{corucia_zebrata_2026,
title = {Corucia zebrata},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/corucia-zebrata}
}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.