Reptilia · Squamata
Oedura castelnauiThominot, 1889
Northern Velvet Gecko
Photograph by Evert Materman, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
A tree-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating gecko from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 97 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Diplodactylidae › Oedura
- Grows to
- 97mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 15years
Longer than 86% 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
38 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
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 15years
in excess of 15 years in captivity (Porter 2008)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 97mm3.75 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 88.3mm3.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 97mm3.75 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 38mm1.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 38mm1.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 18.6g0.66 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 7.42g0.26 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 1.08g0.04 oz
max 97 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
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest, Savanna
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 357–500m
- Range size
- 382,975km²
Arthropods, maybe small geckos (Schostakowski 2001), arthropods and other geckos (Price et al. 2010)
Schostakowski 2001, Nordberg and Schwarzkopf 2015, Price et al. 2010
Terrestrial and Arboreal (Cogger?)/ arboreal (Wilson 2005, Nordberg and Schwarzkopf 2015, Riedel et al. 2020, exclusively: Pillai et al. 2020), arboreal, occasionally on the ground (Price et al. 2010), generalist (Green et al. 2024)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 2eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1–2per year
- First breeds at
- 12months
2 (e.g., Brown 2012)
e.g., Brown 2012
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Thominot
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1889
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
15.5 in × 9.5 in × 15.5 in(39 × 24 × 39 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 3.75 in (97 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 Northern Velvet 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.
3kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 19 g, the heaviest recorded for Northern Velvet 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
- — 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
- — 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
- — 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 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). Oedura castelnaui. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/oedura-castelnaui
@misc{oedura_castelnaui_2026,
title = {Oedura castelnaui},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/oedura-castelnaui}
}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.