Reptilia · Squamata
Gerrhonotus infernalisBaird, 1859
Texas Alligator Lizard
Photograph by The original uploader was Dawson at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
An active by day or night, meat-eating lizard from the Nearctic region, reaching 204 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Anguidae › Gerrhonotus
- Grows to
- 204mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 3.5years
Longer than 84% of all species in Anguidae 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 72 to 610 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
39 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
- 2007
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 3.5years
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 20.7°C
Myhrvold, Baldridge, Chan, Sivam, Freeman, and Ernest, 2015, Ecology, 96:3109-3109
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 204mm8 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 137.2mm5.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 127.7mm5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 36.5mm1.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 36.5mm1.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 187.3g6.6 oz
max 204 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
- Active foraging
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Rocky, Shrubland
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 180–3400m
- Range size
- 333,221km²
invertebrates, snakes and lizards (Lemos-Espinal and Smith 2007), insects (Flury 1949, Hibbitts and Hibbitts 2015), juvenile lizards (Banda-Leal et al. 2014), arthropods, lizards and snakes (Ramirez-Bautista et al. 2014)
e.g., Lemos-Espinal and Dixon 2013, Hibbitts and Hibbitts 2015
Diurnal (e.g., Lemos-Espinal and Smith 2007, Ramirez-Bautista et al. 2014)/ nocturnal (Werler 1949) / mostly diurnal (Hibbitts and Hibbitts 2015, "occasionally nocturnal", especially in early summer), cathemeral (Rodda 2020)
Saxicolous/leaf litter (Garcia-Bastida et al. 2013)/arboreal tendencies/arboreal (Ramirez-Bautista et al. 2014)
1350-3400 (Ramirez-Bautista et al. 2014)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 18eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5–31eggs
- Mean clutch
- 13.7–19.6eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
- First breeds at
- 24–48months
5-31 (Burkett 1962, Hibbitts and Hibbitts 2015, Ramirez-Bautista et al. 2014), 28-31 (Lemos-Espinal and Dixon 2013), Cruz-Elizalde et al. 2022b (13.7 ± 2.6 range 9–18, n = 3), 10-17, mean = 14 (Vargas-Ramirez et al. 2023, n = 4)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Anguimoprha
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Baird
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1859
- Type locality
- USA
Keeping one
2 ft 8 in × 2 ft 8 in × 2 ft 8 in(82 × 82 × 82 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 in (204 mm), at 4 × 4 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Texas Alligator Lizard. 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.
21kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 187 g, the heaviest recorded for Texas Alligator Lizard — 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
- — Body mass at hatching
- — 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
- — Clutches in a year
- — 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
Others in Anguidae
- Anzuetoi Arboreal Alligator Lizard
- Argueta Arboreal Alligator Lizard
- Asian Glass Lizard
- Baja California Legless Lizard
- Bakersfield Legless Lizard
- Banded Arboreal Alligator Lizard
- Bogert's Arboreal Alligator Lizard
- Brilliant Arboreal Alligator Lizard
- Buettikofer's Glass Lizard
- California Legless Lizard
- Campbell's Alligator Lizard
- Cedros Island Alligator Lizard
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). Gerrhonotus infernalis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gerrhonotus-infernalis
@misc{gerrhonotus_infernalis_2026,
title = {Gerrhonotus infernalis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gerrhonotus-infernalis}
}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.
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.