Reptilia · Squamata
Ophiodes intermediusBoulenger, 1894
Middle worm lizard
Photograph by Candela Castro, CC BY, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating lizard from the Neotropic region, reaching 268 mm snout to vent.
Also called Lagarto verme médio, Silver-lined Worm Lizard.
Reptilia › Squamata › Diploglossidae › Ophiodes
- Grows to
- 268mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives
- Cryptic
Longer than 87% of all species in Diploglossidae 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 64 to 340 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.
Two of these figures disagree
Body mass (adult female, mean) is given as 94.3, and Body mass (greatest) as 62.8 — but an average female cannot outweigh the heaviest animal recorded. They come from different sources and both are shown exactly as those sources give them.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2014
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 268mm10.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 176.5mm7 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 171mm6.75 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 72.8mm2.75 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 95mm3.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 62.83g2.2 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasureddisputed
- 94.3g3.3 oz
max 268 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
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Cryptic
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Savanna
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 7–12months
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Range size
- 1,342,547km²
Arthropods and conspecifics (e.g., Carreira et al. 2005, Truntau et al. 2016)
Cathemeral/nocturnal (Truntau et al. 2016)
Terrestrial/cryptic (Truntau et al. 2016)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 8.7eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 4–11eggs
- Mean clutch
- 6.4–11eggs
Fitch 1970 (n=11 in two females, also Greer 1967), Ortiz et al. 2017: 4-9, mean 6.4, n=12;
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Anguimoprha
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Boulenger
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1894
- Type locality
- Paraguay
Keeping one
3 ft 6 in × 3 ft 6 in × 2 ft 2 in(107 × 107 × 67 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.
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 10.5 in (268 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Middle worm lizard. 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 63 g, the heaviest recorded for Middle worm 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 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
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Longest recorded life
- — 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
- — 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
- — 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
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
Others in Diploglossidae
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). Ophiodes intermedius. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ophiodes-intermedius
@misc{ophiodes_intermedius_2026,
title = {Ophiodes intermedius},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ophiodes-intermedius}
}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.