Reptilia · Squamata
Hemidactylus frenatusDuméril & Bibron, 1836
Chichak
Photograph by Juan Manuel Cardona Granda, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A nocturnal, meat-eating gecko from the Oriental region, reaching 67 mm snout to vent.
Also called Bridled house gecko, Common House Gecko, South Asian House Gecko.
Once published as Hemidactylus vandermeermohri — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Gekkonidae › Hemidactylus
- Grows to
- 67mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 7years
Longer than 61% 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
48 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
- 2019
- 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
- 31.8°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 27°C81 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 24.9–29.1°C77–84 °F
Werner et al. 1993
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 67mm2.75 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 52.7mm2 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 52.7mm2 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 21mm0.8 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 21mm0.8 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 6.31g0.22 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 3.3g0.12 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.2g0.01 oz
max 67 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 "low"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Mixed
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous
- Habitat
- Forest, Rocky, Savanna, 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
- 1600m
- Range size
- 7,345,856km²
- Density
- 300–2300per hectare
Arthropods and small geckos (e.g., Zug 2013, Gardner and Jasper 2012, see Tkaczenko et al. 2014, Pauwels et al. 2000), arthropods and occasionally gecko eggs (Vassilieva et al. 2016), Arthropods (Villegas-Retana et al. 2016), insects (Meneses et al. 2022)
Sit and Wait (Cooper et al. 2013, Mesquita et al. 2016) / active predator (Gardner and Jasper 2012)
(e.g., Pauwels et al. 2000, Srinivasulu et al. 2014, Das and Bhattacharjee 2005, Jenssen and Sy 2022, Meneses et al. 2022), mainly nocturnal (Vassilieva et al. 2016)
Arboreal (e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016, Vassilieva et al. 2016, Jenssen and Sy 2022)/arboreal and on walls (Pauwels et al. 2000), edificarian (e.g., Davis et al. 2018, Jenssen and Sy 2022)/on the ground, on rocks and on walls (Meneses et al. 2022), Arboreal & Saxicolous (Lee Grismer, pers. comm.)
0-1600 (Srinivasulu et al. 2014), 0-1545 (Ramirez-Bautista et al. 2014)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Gestation or incubation
- 58days
- Average clutch
- 1.95eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 1.9–2eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 10per year
- Clutches a year
- 3–17per year
- First breeds at
- 2.5–12months
- Age at first breeding · female
- 365days
1-2 (Teynie and David 2010), 2, rarely 1 (Zug 2013), 2 (Lamberson 1987, Das and Das 2017, Jenssen and Sy 2022), mean 2 (Mesquita et al. 2016), 2 (Vassilieva et al. 2016, de Silva and Ukuwela 2017), 2 (Gawor et al. 2016 - in all 3 females), 1-2, mean 1.95 (Goldberg and Kraus 2016), 2 (Geissler et al. 2011; n=1, Parmar 2020, n=1)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Duméril & Bibron
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1836
- Type locality
- Indonesia
Keeping one
10.5 in × 10.5 in × 10.5 in(27 × 27 × 27 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 2.75 in (67 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 89 °F (31.8 °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.
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 6 g, the heaviest recorded for Chichak — 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 the young develop
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — 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
- — 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 frenatus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemidactylus-frenatus
@misc{hemidactylus_frenatus_2026,
title = {Hemidactylus frenatus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemidactylus-frenatus}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- 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.