Reptilia · Squamata
Hemidactylus platyurusSchneider, 1797
Asian House Gecko
Photograph by Ben Machado, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A tree-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating gecko from the Oriental region, reaching 69 mm snout to vent.
Also called Flat-tailed House Gecko, Frilled House Gecko.
Once published as Cosymbotus platyurus, Platyurus platyurus — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Gekkonidae › Hemidactylus
- Grows to
- 69mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives
- Arboreal
Longer than 63% 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
36 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
- Increasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 69mm2.75 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 54.5mm2.25 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 54.5mm2.25 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 22mm0.9 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 22mm0.9 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 6.84g0.24 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.33g0.01 oz
max 69 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
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2500m
- Range size
- 6,311,482km²
Arthropods, lizards and refuse (see Tkaczenko et al. 2014)/arthropods (Vassilieva et al. 2016), see also Kastle et al. 2013, insects (Das and Das 2017, Harikrishnan and Vasudevan 2018)
(Das and de Silva 2011, Mesquita et al. 2016)/Kastle et al. 2013 write they recognize prey at 1.5m and approach it
(Cox et al. 1998, Alcala 1986, Gaulke 2011), "more Diurnal than other house geckos" (Schleich and Kastle 2002, Taylor 1922, Kastle et al. 2013). Nocturnal (Onn et al. 2009, Somaweera and Somaweera 2009, Ahmed et al. 2009, Grismer 2011, Feder and Feder 1981, Kaiser et al. 2011, Pauwels et al. 2000, Das and Bhattacharjee 2005, Vassilieva et al. 2016, de Silva and Ukuwela 2017, Harikrishnan and Vasudevan 2018), dusk and night (de Silva et al. 2016)
(e.g., Das and Bhattacharjee 2005, Kastle et al. 2013, de Silva et al. 2016, IUCN Bangladesh 2015, Harikrishnan and Vasudevan 2018)/ saxicolous (Mesquita et al. 2016) / arboreal and edificarian (de Silva and Ukuwela 2017, Zug and Mulachy 2019)
max 1370 (Kastle et al. 2013), 0-1540 (Das and Das 2017)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 2eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2eggs
- First breeds at
- 12months
mean 2 (e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016), 2 (Pauwels et al. 2000, n=1), 1-2 (Vassilieva et al. 2016), 2 (Das and Das 2017, Jenssen and Sy 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Schneider
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1797
- Type locality
- Unknown
Keeping one
11 in × 6.75 in × 11 in(28 × 17 × 28 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 2.75 in (69 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 Asian House Gecko. 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 7 g, the heaviest recorded for Asian 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
- — Longest recorded life
- — 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
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — 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
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — 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 platyurus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemidactylus-platyurus
@misc{hemidactylus_platyurus_2026,
title = {Hemidactylus platyurus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemidactylus-platyurus}
}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.