Reptilia · Squamata
Hemidactylus turcicusLinnaeus, 1758
Turkish Gecko
Photograph by Court Harding, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A nocturnal, meat-eating gecko from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 65 mm snout to vent.
Also called Mediterranean House Gecko.
Reptilia › Squamata › Gekkonidae › Hemidactylus
- Grows to
- 64.7mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 9years
Longer than 58% 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
47 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
- 2008
- Population trend
- Increasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 9years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 28.4–29.1°C83–84 °F
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 23.85°C75 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 16.4–31.3°C62–88 °F
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009, Amitai and Bouskila 2001, Werner et al. 1993: 8; Hughes 1988, Slavens and Slavens 1999: 8 and 5 months, Cicek et al. 2015 (8 in captivity, 4 in nature in Iberia, but 4-9 in nature in Turkey see also Kalayci et al. 2015, Bar et al. 2021), 7.9 years (Hallmann & Griebeler 2015)
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 64.7mm2.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 48mm2 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 48mm2 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 23.5mm0.9 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 23.5mm0.9 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 5.73g0.2 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 2.53g0.09 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 2.48g0.09 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.2g0.01 oz
Shai Meiri, unpublished
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 "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Mixed
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous
- Habitat
- Caves, Rocky, Shrubland, Subterranean
- Biome
- Mediterranean
- Active season · months of the year
- 7–12months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1300m
- Range size
- 2,226,431km²
- Density
- 544–2210per hectare
Arthropods and juveniles of Podarcis (Corti and Cascio 2002, Bauer 1990), insects (Stille and Stille 2017), arthropods and snails (quantitative analysis in Texas, Saenz 1996), arthropods (Giulia et al. 2019, Barnagaud et al. 2020, Bar et al. 2021)
active foraging / Sit and Wait (Arnold 1980 p324, Cooper et al. 2001)
Crepuscular and nocturnal (e.g., Stille and Stille 2017 and pers. obs., Bar et al. 2021), can be seen basking (Corti and Cascio 2002) / cathemeral (Frankenberg 1978)/mostly nocturnal but often seen by daytime (Schleich 1987, see also del Marmol et al. 2019)
Variable / saxicolous and edificarian (pers. obs.), Saxicolous (Barnagaud et al. 2020)
max 1100 ( Hallmann and Griebeler 2015), max 1200 (Kwet 2015), 0-360 (del Marmol et al. 2019), 270 m below sea level to 1185 m in Majdl Shams (SM, pers. Obs.), sea level to about 1000 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, XX/XY
- Average clutch
- 2eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–3eggs
- Mean clutch
- 1.5–2eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 3per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–5per year
- First breeds at
- 8.6–36months
mean 2.5(!), Hallmann & Griebeler 2015, mean 2 (Werner 1995), 1-2 (Stille and Stille 2017), 2 (Selcer 1986), mean 1.5 (Barnagaud et al. 2020), usaully 2 (del Marmol et al. 2019), 2, rarely 1 (Bar et al. 2021), 1-2, mean 1.86 (Akef 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1758
- Type locality
- Turkey
Keeping one
10 in × 10 in × 10 in(26 × 26 × 26 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 2.5 in (64.7 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 83–84 °F (28.4–29.1 °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 Turkish 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
- — 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
- — 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 turcicus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemidactylus-turcicus
@misc{hemidactylus_turcicus_2026,
title = {Hemidactylus turcicus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemidactylus-turcicus}
}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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.