Reptilia · Squamata
Lepidophyma smithiiBocourt, 1876
Smith's Tropical Night Lizard
Photograph by Juan Cruzado Cortés, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, plant-eating lizard from the Neotropic region, reaching 115 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Xantusiidae › Lepidophyma
- Grows to
- 115mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 5years
Longer than 83% of all species in Xantusiidae 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 36 to 153 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
34 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
- 2012
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 5years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 26.8°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 26°C79 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 26–29.1°C79–84 °F
Mautz and Lopez-Forment 1978: 5, Flores-Villela and Rubio-Perez 2008: 5
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 115mm4.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 28mm1 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 28mm1 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 30.55g1.1 oz
Shai Meiri, unpublished
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Saxicolous, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Rocky
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1240m
- Range size
- 52,342km²
Omnivorous: figs (Zug et al., Olesen and Valido 2003, Pianka and Vitt 2003, Bezy and Camarillo 2002), and termites (Bezy and Camarillo 2002) / predator (Andrews and Pough 1980) / almost entirely ficus fruit in a Mexican cave (Mautz 1982), 91% figs (Mautz and Lopez-Forment 1978), omnivore (Palacios-Aguilar et al. 2018)
(e.g., Arenas-Moreno et al. 2018)/ mainly nocturnal but also active by day (Flores-Villela and Rubio-Perez 2008)
Leaf Litter/Saxicolous (Flores-Villela and Rubio-Perez 2008)/ "can be found in caves formed by large granite boulders, under logs, and within tree stumps," (Arenas-Moreno et al. 2018)
0-1200 (Arenas-Moreno et al. 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 8eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 8eggs
Flores-Villela and Rubio-Perez 2008
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Bocourt
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1876
- Type locality
- Guatemala
Keeping one
18 in × 18 in × 11.5 in(46 × 46 × 29 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
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 4.5 in (115 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 80 °F (26.8 °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
Prey size does not apply. A herbivore's diet is judged on fibre, on the ratio of calcium to phosphorus, and on avoiding plants high in oxalates.
The animal does not take prey items. This is established practice, not a measurement.
4kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 31 g, the heaviest recorded for Smith's Tropical Night Lizard — 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 · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — 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
- — 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 Xantusiidae
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). Lepidophyma smithii. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/lepidophyma-smithii
@misc{lepidophyma_smithii_2026,
title = {Lepidophyma smithii},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/lepidophyma-smithii}
}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.