Reptilia · Squamata
Hemiergis talbingoensisCopland, 1946
Victoria Three-toed Earless Skink
Photograph by James K. Douch, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
A day-active, meat-eating skink from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 65 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Hemiergis
- Grows to
- 65mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 2.4years
Longer than only 40% of all skinks 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 24 to 500 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
29 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
- Reduced
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 2.4years
Myhrvold, Baldridge, Chan, Sivam, Freeman, and Ernest, 2015, Ecology, 96:3109-3109
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 65mm2.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 2.16g0.08 oz
Shai Meiri, unpublished
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Fossorial, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 400–1500m
- Range size
- 282,959km²
small litter invertebrates (Robertson and Coventry 2019)
Diurnal / predominantly diurnal (Robertson and Coventry 2019)/under cover during the day (Steve Wilson & Brendan Schembri, separately, pers. comm. To Jules Farquhar April 2020)
Fossorial&Terrestrial (Michael and Lindenmayer 2010, Swan et al. 2017, Swan 2020), secretive (Robertson and Coventry 2019)
400-1500 (Torkkola et al. 2021)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 3eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–4eggs
- Mean clutch
- 3eggs
3 (Myhrvold et al. 2015), 2-4 (Robertson and Coventry 2019)
(Myhrvold et al. 2015), 2-4 (Robertson and Coventry 2019)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- Hemiergis talbingoensis talbingoensis COPLAND 1946 Hemiergis talbingoensis davisi COPLAND 1946
- Described by
- Copland
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1946
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
10 in × 10 in × 6.5 in(26 × 26 × 16 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 1.25 in (3 cm) deep.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
Burrows, so substrate deep enough to dig in matters as much as floor area.
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 (65 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Victoria Three-toed Earless Skink. 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.
0kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 2 g, the heaviest recorded for Victoria Three-toed Earless Skink — 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 female mean
- — 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 female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Clutches in a year
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — 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
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
Others in Scincidae
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). Hemiergis talbingoensis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemiergis-talbingoensis
@misc{hemiergis_talbingoensis_2026,
title = {Hemiergis talbingoensis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/hemiergis-talbingoensis}
}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.
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.