Reptilia · Squamata
Furcifer pardalisCuvier, 1829
Ambilobe panther chameleon
Photograph by Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
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A tree-dwelling, day-active, omnivorous chameleon from the Madagascan region, reaching 250 mm snout to vent.
Once published as Chamaeleo pardalis — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Chamaeleonidae › Furcifer
- Grows to
- 250mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 7years
Longer than 98% of all chameleons 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 18.2 to 300 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
- 2011
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 7years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 32°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 31.65°C89 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 31.3–32°C88–90 °F
De Magalhaes & Costa 2009: 5.2, Slavens and Slavens 1999: 5 years, 2 months, Rogner 1997: 2 in the wild, 4 in captivity, Andreone et al. 2005: 2 in nature (cited in Eckhardt et al. 2018 as "rarely more than 1 year"), Measey et al. 2014: 2 in nature, LeBerre et al. 2000: 6, Mattioli et al. 2006: 1-2 years in nature; LeBerre 2009: over 6 in captivity; 2-3 years (Tessa et al. 2017), 2-7 years in captivity (Augros 2019)
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 250mm9.75 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 97.3mm3.75 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 102.7mm4 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 27.5mm1 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 37mm1.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 261.7g9.2 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 93g3.3 oz
max 250 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
How it lives
- Diet
- Omnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Madagascan
- Mainland or island
- Found only on islands
- Elevation · above sea level
- 20–980m
- Range size
- 109,567km²
- Density
- 17.4–81.1per hectare
(LeBerre et al. 2000, Necas 1999), mostly of insects, arachnids, small vertebrates and occasionally green leaves and fruit (Sanchez et al. 2021), insects, izards, plants (Augros 2019)
Active foraging/sit and wait (Banfi et al. 2023)
e.g., Sanchez et al. 2021
e.g., Sanchez et al. 2021, Augros 2019
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 30eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 10–50eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 4per year
- Clutches a year
- 2–6per year
- First breeds at
- 6–8months
30-50 (Mattioli et al. 2006), LeBerre et al. 2000: 15-30; LeBerre 2009: 20-40, 12-45 (Augros 2019)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Acrodontia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Cuvier
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1829
- Type locality
- Madagascar
Keeping one
3 ft 3 in × 2 ft 1 in × 3 ft 3 in(100 × 63 × 100 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 9.75 in (250 mm), at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 90 °F (32 °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
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
28kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 262 g, the heaviest recorded for Ambilobe panther chameleon — 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.
- Localebreeder consensus
The Madagascan population an animal descends from, and what displaying adult males from there look like — the reds and whites of an Ambilobe, the blue of a Nosy Be, the red of a Tamatave.
Worth knowing. A locale is a population, not a gene. It does not combine with another locale and no pairing produces a ratio of them, and crossing locales is widely discouraged because the offspring belong to no population and cannot honestly be sold as either parent.
Worth knowing. The colour this species is famous for belongs to displaying adult males. Females stay small and brown, peach or grey for life, and a male's colour changes with mood, temperature and health — an animal bought on a photograph will not look like that photograph most of the time.
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 · a typical adult
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — 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
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
Others in Chamaeleonidae
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). Furcifer pardalis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/furcifer-pardalis
@misc{furcifer_pardalis_2026,
title = {Furcifer pardalis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/furcifer-pardalis}
}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.