Reptilia · Squamata
Mniarogekko chahouaBavay, 1869
Bavay's Giant Gecko
Photograph by Lennart Hudel, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A tree-dwelling, nocturnal, omnivorous gecko from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 147 mm snout to vent.
Also called Mossy prehensile-tailed gecko, New Caledonian mossy gecko.
Once published as Rhacodactylus chahoua — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Diplodactylidae › Mniarogekko
- Grows to
- 147mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 5years
Longer than 97% of all species in Diplodactylidae 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 28.8 to 370 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
37 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
- Vulnerable
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2017
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- B1ab(iii,v)+2ab(iii,v)
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 5years
Werner et al. 1993: 5; Slavens and Slavens 1999: 4 and 8 months
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 147mm5.75 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 140.6mm5.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 41mm1.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 42mm1.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 66.3g2.3 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 51.6g1.8 oz
max 147 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016)
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Found only on islands
- Elevation · above sea level
- 151–875m
- Range size
- 3821km²
Omnivorous in captivity (Henkel and Schmidt 1995)
Nocturnal )e.g., Hudel et al. 2020)
e.g., Hudel et al. 2020
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Temperature
- Average clutch
- 2eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2eggs
- First breeds at
- 12–18months
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Bavay
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1869
- Type locality
- New Caledonia
Keeping one
Bavay's Giant Gecko is assessed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.
23 in × 14.5 in × 23 in(59 × 37 × 59 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Lives in vegetation, so height and climbing structure matter more than floor space.
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 5.75 in (147 mm), at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Bavay's Giant Gecko. 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.
8kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 66 g, the heaviest recorded for Bavay's Giant 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.
Morphs
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 2 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- Colour and moss patternbreeder consensus
How green, red or grey an animal is and how strongly the lichen-like pattern shows. Worked on by selection, and it shifts with the animal's mood and the time of day.
- Localitybreeder consensus
Pine Isle animals run larger and are often more strongly marked than mainland Grande Terre ones. This tracks the population an animal came from, not a gene.
Worth knowing. Pine Isle and mainland lines are widely kept separate, and an animal described as one or the other is a claim about its ancestors that a buyer cannot check by looking. Crosses between the two exist and are usually sold as such.
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 · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — 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
- — 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
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
Others in Diplodactylidae
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). Mniarogekko chahoua. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mniarogekko-chahoua
@misc{mniarogekko_chahoua_2026,
title = {Mniarogekko chahoua},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mniarogekko-chahoua}
}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.