Reptilia · Squamata
Hemidactylus mabouiaMoreau de Jonnès, 1818
House gecko
Photograph placed in the public domain, CC0, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating gecko from the Afrotropic region, reaching 90 mm snout to vent.
Also called Moreau’s Tropical House Gecko, Wood slave gecko.
Once published as Hemidactylus gardineri, Hemidactylus mandanus — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Gekkonidae › Hemidactylus
- Grows to
- 90mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 2.6years
Longer than 84% 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
44 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
- 2.6years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 24°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 29.3°C85 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 24.1–34.5°C75–94 °F
2 and 7 months (Werner et al. 1993, Dewynter et al. 2020)
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 90mm3.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 58.2mm2.25 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 58.2mm2.25 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 22.5mm0.9 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 22.5mm0.9 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 14.25g0.5 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.1g0 oz
max 90 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
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous
- Habitat
- Savanna, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2100m
- Range size
- 9,560,589km²
- Density
- 20–2100per hectare
invertebrates and small lizards (e.g., geckos and anoles, Bauer 1990, Pietersen et al. 2021), insects (Iturriaga and Marrero 2013, Ceriaco et al. 2020), arthropods (Travassos et al. 2015, Segniagbeto et al. 2015, Broadley 2008, and details in Druke and Rodder 2017, Sousa et al. 2017), insects and small vertebrates (Henderson and Powell 2018), "they can exploit many human derived non-insect foods such as bread, rice, and pet food (Weterings and Weterings 2019) but there is also evidence of house geckos preying on vertebrates and feeding on other, often native, reptiles" (Welman and Ibarzabal 2022)
active foraging / Sit and Wait (Vitt 1995, Huey et al. 2001, Mesquita et al. 2016)/mixed (van Huyssteen 2023)
Nocturnal (e.g., Broadley 2008, Schmitz and Higham 2018, Uchoa et al. 2022, Pietersen et al. 2021, van Huyssteen 2023) / sometimes Diurnal (Loveridge 1942, Loveridge 1947, Gans et al. 1965, Murphy 1997, Ullenbruch et al. 2010), mostly nocturnal, larger ones active later into the night (Henderson and Powell 2018), cathemeral (Malonza and Bwong 2023)
Saxicolous and Arboreal (e.g., Guedes et al. 2017, van Huyssteen 2023)/ terrestrial and arboreal (Colli et al. 2002) / saxicolous (Mesquita et al. 2016)/arboreal (Branch 2016), trees and rock crevices (Broadley 1962), general/antropic (Uchoa et al. 2022), mostly arboreal (Malonza and Bwong 2023)
9-1647 (Ceriaco et al. 2020)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, XX/XY
- Average clutch
- 1.86eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 1.71–2eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 6.5per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–12per year
- First breeds at
- 11–12months
means 1.714-2 (Mesquita et al. 2016), invariably 2 (Henderson and Powell 2018), usually 1, sometimes 2 (Pietersen et al. 2021), 2 (Malonza and Bwong 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Moreau de Jonnès
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1818
- Type locality
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Keeping one
14 in × 14 in × 14 in(36 × 36 × 36 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 3.5 in (90 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 75 °F (24 °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.
2kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 14 g, the heaviest recorded for 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
- — 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
- — 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
- — 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 mabouia. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemidactylus-mabouia
@misc{hemidactylus_mabouia_2026,
title = {Hemidactylus mabouia},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemidactylus-mabouia}
}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.