Reptilia · Squamata
Laudakia vulgarisSonnini & Latreille, 1802
Egyptian Rock Agama
Photograph by Kseniia Marianna Prondzynska, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A day-active, omnivorous lizard from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 140 mm snout to vent.
Also called Short-Toed Rock Agama.
Once published as Stellagama vulgaris — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Agamidae › Laudakia
- Grows to
- 140mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 10.4years
Longer than 78% of all agamids 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 32 to 418 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
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 10.4years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 33–33.5°C91–92 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 31.9–34.3°C89–94 °F
TAUM museum records: 10.36,
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 140mm5.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 109.3mm4.25 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 30mm1.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 95g3.4 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 23.8g0.84 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 1.25g0.04 oz
Frankenberg and Werner 1992, Nevo 1981, Moravec and Modry 1994b, TAU Herpetology Collections, Lachman et al. 2006, Almog et al. 2005, Werner 1995, Werner 2016, Panov and Zykova 2016, Kadry et al. 2020,
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Omnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous
- Active season · months of the year
- 11–12months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2640m
- Density
- 1–60per hectare
- Home range · largest recorded
- 250m2
Omnivorous, mainly arthropods, regularly plants, rarely smaller lizards (Bar and Haimovitch 2012), avian eggs and chicks (Kopan and Yom-Tov 1982), mostly insects (Werner 2016), details in Baker et al. 2021 (arthropods, an Eirenis: E. rothii)
Al-Sheikhly and Mallon 2013
Diurnal and heliophylic (pers. obs. and e.g., Werner 2016)
Saxicolous and arboreal (pers. obs.)
min -262 (Shai, pers. obs.), near sea level to 2640 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 4–20eggs
- Mean clutch
- 7.7–10.2eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1–3per year
- First breeds at
- 24months
4-12 (Bar and Haimovitch 2012), 6-18 (Ibrahim and El-Naggar 2013), mean 7.7 (Werner 1995), 4-10, mean 8.1 (Werner 2016), 5-20, mean 10.2 (TAU experimental zoo data), 4-20, usually 7-9 (Spawls et al. 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Acrodontia
- Subspecies
- Laudakia vulgaris brachydactyla (HAAS 1951) Laudakia vulgaris picea (PARKER 1935) Laudakia vulgaris vulgaris (SONNINI & LATREILLE 1801)
- Described by
- Sonnini & Latreille
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1802
- Type locality
- Egypt
Keeping one
22 in × 22 in × 22 in(56 × 56 × 56 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 5.5 in (140 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 91–92 °F (33–33.5 °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.
11kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 95 g, the heaviest recorded for Egyptian Rock Agama — 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 female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Average clutch
- — Clutches in a year
- — 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
- — Sex decided by
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Biome
- — Habitat
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Agamidae
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). Laudakia vulgaris. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/laudakia-vulgaris
@misc{laudakia_vulgaris_2026,
title = {Laudakia vulgaris},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/laudakia-vulgaris}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- GBIF Secretariat. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Used under CC BY 4.0. Common names aggregated from constituent checklists.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.