Reptilia · Squamata
Hemidactylus brookiiGray, 1845
Brook's House Gecko
Photograph by po-po-pro, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A nocturnal, meat-eating gecko from the Oriental region, reaching 85 mm snout to vent.
Also called Spotted House Gecko.
Once published as Hemidactylus luzonensis — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Gekkonidae › Hemidactylus
- Grows to
- 85mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 4years
Longer than 80% 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
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
- 2017
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 4years
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 25°C77 °F
Carey and Judge 2000: 1.1, Hughes 1988, Werner et al. 1993 and Slavens and Slavens 1999: 1.1, Pancharatna and Kumbar 2005: 4 if LAGs correspond to years
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 85mm3.25 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 49.6mm2 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 49.6mm2 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 22.9mm0.9 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 22.9mm0.9 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 12.17g0.43 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.1g0 oz
max 85 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, saxicolous, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Shrubland
- 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
- 2100m
- Range size
- 6,273,020km²
Arthropods (e.g., Kastle et al. 2013; and seeds, Tikader and Sharma 1992, and snails, Rugiero et al. 2007), also cannibalistic and takes amphibian larvae (Bauer 1990), and small lizards (Srinivasulu et al. 2014), insects (Jenssen and Sy 2022)
Somaweera and Somaweera 2009
nocturnal and Crepuscular (active during the day in huts, Schmidt et al. 1919), active under leaf litter 3-4 hours before sunset (Masroor 2012), nocturnal (e.g., Avery 1980, Jenssen and Sy 2022)
Terrestrial and Arboreal, and Saxicolous (Le Berre 1989), arboreal (Jenssen and Sy 2022)
0-1000 (Srinivasulu et al. 2014), to 1370 (Kastle et al. 2013)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 2eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 3per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–4per year
2 (IUCN Bangladesh 2015, Das and Das 2017)
IUCN Bangladesh 2015, Das and Das 2017
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Gray
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1845
- Type locality
- Ghana
Keeping one
13.5 in × 13.5 in × 13.5 in(34 × 34 × 34 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 3.25 in (85 mm), at 4 × 4 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
Active animals measured in the wild averaged 77 °F (25 °C).
Mean body temperature of active individuals measured in nature. 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.
2kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 12 g, the heaviest recorded for Brook's House Gecko — 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
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — 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
- — Sex decided by
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — 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). Hemidactylus brookii. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemidactylus-brookii
@misc{hemidactylus_brookii_2026,
title = {Hemidactylus brookii},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemidactylus-brookii}
}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.