Reptilia · Squamata
Egernia cunninghamiGray, 1832
Cunningham's Skink
Photograph by Benjamint444, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A rock-dwelling, day-active, plant-eating skink from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 255 mm snout to vent.
Also called Cunningham's Spiny-tailed Skink.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Egernia
- Grows to
- 255mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 50years
Longer than 99% 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
41 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
- 2017
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 50years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 32–35.3°C90–96 °F
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 31.55°C89 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 30.1–33°C86–91 °F
>8 (Heatwole and Taylor 1987), Carey and Judge 2000: 20, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009, Brown 2012 and Slavens and Slavens 1999: 26.5, Chapple 2003: >20, Greer 2005: "An individual acquired as a adult lived for 15 years (Dinardo, 1983).", Greer 1989: 19 and 11 months, Wilson 2012: "reached it's 40's"; Petzold 2008: 16, While et al. 2019: over 50, melbourne museum staff (live reptile keepers, pers. comm to S. Meiri and A. Slavenko 2019: a living female is 25 years old), >50 (Whiting and While 2017, "Based on one captive animal;")
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 255mm10 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 204.9mm8 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 56mm2.25 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 56mm2.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 401.8g14.2 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 262.6g9.3 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 7g0.25 oz
Shai Meiri, unpublished
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Saxicolous
- Habitat
- Forest, Rocky
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 600–980m
- Range size
- 439,014km²
- Density
- 82–368per hectare
(? And Cooper and Vitt 2002, Hutchinson 1993)/Omnivorous / mostly Herbivorous (Greer 2005) / includes plant material in diet (Michael and Lindenmayer 2010), up to 90% plants (Robertson and Coventry 2019), also some invertebrates and small verterates
e.g., Swan et al. 2017, Robertson and Coventry 2019, Swan 2020
(e.g., Swan 2020, Whiting and While 2017)/ saxicolous and semi arboreal (Michael and Lindenmayer 2010)
500-600 (Pengilley 1972)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 4.4eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–11eggs
- Mean clutch
- 3–5.8eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
- First breeds at
- 60months
2-4 (Heatwole and Taylor 1987), 1-11 (Brown 2012), 4-6 "although larger litters have been recorded" (Robertson and Coventry 2019), 4-8 (Whiting and While 2017)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Gray
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1832
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
3 ft 4 in × 3 ft 4 in × 2 ft 1 in(102 × 102 × 64 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 10 in (255 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 90–96 °F (32–35.3 °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
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.
40kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 402 g, the heaviest recorded for Cunningham'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 female · snout to vent
- — 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
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — 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
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
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). Egernia cunninghami. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/egernia-cunninghami
@misc{egernia_cunninghami_2026,
title = {Egernia cunninghami},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/egernia-cunninghami}
}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.