Reptilia · Squamata
Mediodactylus kotschyiSteindachner, 1870
Mediterranean Thin-toed gecko
Photograph by Димитър Найденов / Dimìtar Nàydenov, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
An active by day or night, meat-eating gecko from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 56 mm snout to vent.
Once published as Cyrtodactylus kotschyi, Cyrtopodion kotschyi, Gymnodactylus kotschyi — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Gekkonidae › Mediodactylus
- Grows to
- 56mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 8years
Longer than only 46% 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
43 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
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 8years
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 26.05°C79 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 21.2–30.9°C70–88 °F
Beutler 1981 - adults lived for 6 years in captivity, which he takes as 9 and I as 8,
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 56mm2.25 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 40.7mm1.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 40.7mm1.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 18.75mm0.7 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 18.8mm0.7 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 3.84g0.14 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 2.36g0.08 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.21g0.01 oz
max 56 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, saxicolous
- Habitat
- Rocky, Shrubland
- Biome
- Mediterranean
- Active season · months of the year
- 8–12months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2500m
- Range size
- 122,053km²
- Density
- 100per hectare
Arthropods and oligochaetes (Corti and Cascio 2002), see also Beutler 1981, arthropods and a few snails (Valakos and Polymeni 1990), arthropods (Valakos and Vlachopanos 1987, Szczerbak 2003, Stille and Stille 2017)
Valakos and Vlachopanos 1987
Nocturnal and Crepuscular / partly active by day (Arnold 1987, Rogner 1997a, Atatur and Gocmen 2001, Stille and Stille 2017) / mainly diurnal (or actually crepuscular, Sindaco et al. 2006) - more nocturnal in summer (Sindaco et al. 2006, Corti and Cascio 2002), not strictly nocturnal (Werner 1930), / chiefly diurnal (Sindaco et al. 2010), we observed it active day and at night, in Greek islands (Shai, pers. obs.), Cathemeral (Valakos 1989, Valakos and Vlachopanos 1989), mostly nocturnal in Kosovo summer (Ajtic 2014), cathemeral in spring, Crepuscular and nocturnal (Szczerbak 2003),
Arboreal and Saxicolous (pers obs.)
max 1400 (Speybroeck et al. 2016, Kwet 2015), min: sea level (pers. obs.)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 1.63eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–3eggs
- Mean clutch
- 1–2.25eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 3per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–2per year
- First breeds at
- 24months
1-2, mean 1.86 in Greece (Goldberg 2012), 2-6 in Baran and Atatur (Goldberg 2012), 2, rarely one (Beutler 1981), mean 2.25 (Valakos and Vlachopanos 1989), 1-2 (Szczerbak 2003), 1-3, means 1-2.2 (Slavenko et al. 2015), 2 (Stille and Stille 2017)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- Mediodactylus kotschyi kotschyi (STEINDACHNER 1870) Mediodactylus kotschyi adelphiensis (BEUTLER & GRUBER 1977) Mediodactylus kotschyi beutleri (BARAN & GRUBER 1981) Mediodactylus kotschyi bibroni (BEUTLER & GRUBER 1977) Mediodactylus kotschyi bolkarensis RÖSLER 1994 Mediodactylus kotschyi buchholzi (BEUTLER & GRUBER 1977) Mediodactylus kotschyi ciliciensis (BARAN & GRUBER 1982) Mediodactylus kotschyi colchicus (NIKOLSKY 1902) Mediodactylus kotschyi concolor (BEDRIAGA 1882) Mediodactylus kotschyi fitzingeri (STEPÁNEK 1937) Mediodactylus kotschyi fuchsi (BEUTLER & GRUBER 1977) Mediodactylus kotschyi kalypsae (STEPÁNEK 1939) Mediodactylus kotschyi karabagi (BARAN & GRUBER 1981) Mediodactylus kotschyi lycaonicus (MERTENS 1952) Mediodactylus kotschyi maculatus (BEDRIAGA 1882) Mediodactylus kotschyi ponticus (BARAN & GRUBER 1982) Mediodactylus kotschyi rumelicus (MÜLLER 1940) Mediodactylus kotschyi saronicus (WERNER 1937) Mediodactylus kotschyi schultzewestrumi (BEUTLER & GRUBER 1977) Mediodactylus kotschyi skopjensis (KARAMAN 1965) Mediodactylus kotschyi solerii (WETTSTEIN 1937) Mediodactylus kotschyi stepaneki (WETTSTEIN 1937) Mediodactylus kotschyi syriacus (STEPÁNEK 1937) Mediodactylus kotschyi tinensis (BEUTLER & FRÖR 1980) Mediodactylus kotschyi unicolor (WETTSTEIN 1937) Mediodactylus kotschyi wettsteini (STEPÁNEK 1937)
- Described by
- Steindachner
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1870
- Type locality
- Greece
Keeping one
8.75 in × 8.75 in × 8.75 in(22 × 22 × 22 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 2.25 in (56 mm), at 4 × 4 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
Active animals measured in the wild averaged 79 °F (26.1 °C).
Mean body temperature of active individuals measured in nature. 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 4 g, the heaviest recorded for Mediterranean Thin-toed 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
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — 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
- — Sex decided by
- — Population trend
- — 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). Mediodactylus kotschyi. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mediodactylus-kotschyi
@misc{mediodactylus_kotschyi_2026,
title = {Mediodactylus kotschyi},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mediodactylus-kotschyi}
}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.