Reptilia · Squamata
Egernia stokesiiGray, 1845
Gidgee Skink
Photograph by Wildfeuer, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A day-active, plant-eating skink from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 207 mm snout to vent.
Also called Gidgee Spiny-tailed Skink, Stoke’s Skink.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Egernia
- Grows to
- 207mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 25years
Longer than 97% 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
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2017
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 25years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 32.6°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 32.65°C91 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 29.3–36°C85–97 °F
Carey and Judge 2000 say 3 year - before they mature!, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009: 18.2, Duffield and Bull 1996: 25, Chapple 2003: 25; Hauschild and Gassner 1995: 25; Slavens and Slavens 1999: 18 and 3 months, Brown 2012: 18.5, Greer 1989: 12, Whiting and While 2017: >12
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 207mm8.25 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 182.3mm7.25 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 182.3mm7.25 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 75.5mm3 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 75.5mm3 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 208.8g7.4 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 198.8g7 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 8.2g0.29 oz
max 207 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
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous
- Habitat
- Grassland, Rocky, Shrubland
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 320m
- Range size
- 1,248,789km²
Omnivorous / 96% Herbivorous ( Cooper and Vitt 2002) / 94-97% of scats contain plants (Fenner et al. 2007), ontogenetic shift from insectivory to herbivory (Duffield and Bull 1998), herbicvorous (Hutchinson 1993)
e.g., Swan et al. 2017
Saxicolous, Semi Arboreal (see Sources (general) column)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 4.4eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–8eggs
- Mean clutch
- 3–5.8eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 0.88per year
- Clutches a year
- 0.75–1per year
- First breeds at
- 60–72months
1-8 (Brown 2012, Whiting and While 2017)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- Egernia stokesii badia STORR 1978 Egernia stokesii stokesii (GRAY 1845) Egernia stokesii zellingi DE VIS 1884
- Described by
- Gray
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1845
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
2 ft 9 in × 2 ft 9 in × 2 ft 9 in(83 × 83 × 83 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 and climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Recorded both on the ground and climbing, so this is the larger of the two rules in every dimension.
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 8.25 in (207 mm), at 4 × 4 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 91 °F (32.6 °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.
23kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 209 g, the heaviest recorded for Gidgee 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 · 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
- — Red List criteria
- — 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). Egernia stokesii. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/egernia-stokesii
@misc{egernia_stokesii_2026,
title = {Egernia stokesii},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/egernia-stokesii}
}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.