Reptilia · Squamata
Gehyra mutilataWiegmann, 1834
Butler's Dtella
Photograph by Brown R, Siler C, Oliveros C, Welton L, Rock A, Swab J, Van…, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
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A tree-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating gecko from the Oriental region, reaching 64 mm snout to vent.
Also called Butler’s Four-clawed Gecko, Common Four-clawed Gecko, Stump-tailed Gecko.
Once published as Peropus mutilatus — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Gekkonidae › Gehyra
- Grows to
- 64mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 9.3years
Longer than 57% of all geckos 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 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
42 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
- 2018
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 9.3years
Werner et al. 1993: 9.25; Slavens and Slavens 1999: 2, Dewynter et al. 2020: 2
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 64mm2.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 51.7mm2 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 51.1mm2 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 20.5mm0.8 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 20.5mm0.8 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 5.56g0.2 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.31g0.01 oz
max 64 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
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1400m
- Range size
- 3,740,549km²
- Density
- 25–1600per hectare
Arthropods, also sweet fruit (Kohler 2008), arthropods (Grismer 2011), arthropods, fruit juice and nectar (Vassilieva et al. 2016), insects (Das and Das 2017, Black 1983), mainly arthropods - also nectar (Jenssen and Sy 2022)
Mesquita et al. 2016
nocturnal and Crepuscular/nocturnal (e.g., Pauwels et al. 2000, Vassilieva et al. 2016, Bauer and Russell 1992, Davis et al. 2018, Zug and Mulachy 2019, Black 1983)
Saxicolous and Arboreal / saxicolous (Mesquita et al. 2016) / arboreal (Bauer and Russell 1992, Davis et al. 2018, Zug and Mulachy 2019, Black 1983)/edificarian (Jenssen and Sy 2022)
0-130 (Srinivasulu et al. 2014), up to 1200 (Vassilieva et al. 2016), 700-1100 (David et al. 2006), 0-600 (Jenssen and Sy 2022)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 1.8eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 1.6–2eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 3per year
- Clutches a year
- 3per year
- First breeds at
- 1–1.33months
1-2 (Lemos-Espinal and Dixon 2013, Das and Das 2017, Goldberg 2018), mean 2 (e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016), 2 (n=1, Sumarli et al. 2015), 2 (Pauwels et al. 2000, de Silva and Ukuwela 2017), 2-3 (Vassilieva et al. 2016), mean 1.6 (Fred Kraus, pers. comm., January 2019), usually 2 (Jenssen and Sy 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Wiegmann
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1834
- Type locality
- Philippines
Keeping one
10 in × 6.25 in × 10 in(26 × 16 × 26 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 2.5 in (64 mm), at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Butler's Dtella. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
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.
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 6 g, the heaviest recorded for Butler's Dtella — 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 · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — 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
- — 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
- — Red List criteria
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
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). Gehyra mutilata. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gehyra-mutilata
@misc{gehyra_mutilata_2026,
title = {Gehyra mutilata},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gehyra-mutilata}
}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.