Reptilia · Squamata
Ophisaurus ventralisLinnaeus, 1766
Eastern Glass Lizard
Photograph by Josiah Londerée, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A burrowing, active by day or night, meat-eating lizard from the Nearctic region, reaching 306 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Anguidae › Ophisaurus
- Grows to
- 306mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 14.8years
Longer than 95% of all species in Anguidae 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 72 to 610 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
- 2007
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 14.8years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 23°C
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009: 14.8, Slavens and Slavens 1999, 10 (Gras-Riedel 1993)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 306mm12 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 220.5mm8.75 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 220.5mm8.75 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 49.5mm2 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 49.5mm2 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 92.19g3.3 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 23.72g0.84 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 1.23g0.04 oz
max 306 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
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Cryptic, fossorial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Savanna, Shrubland, Wetlands
- Biome
- Temperate Coniferous Forests
- Region
- Nearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 150m
- Range size
- 472,331km²
invertebrates and reptiles / "mostly large arthropods and other invertebrates, but they also eat small vertebrates on occasion" Beane et al. 2010 (see also Krysko et al. 2019), a crab (Watt et al. 2019)
Crepuscular and Diurnal / diurnal and heliothermic (Clusella-Trullas et al. 2008) / mainly diurnal, "espeically in the early morning and late afternoon, but are sometimes active at night", Beane et al. 2010
Terrestrial, Cryptic and fossorial (Jensen et al. 2008) / surface active (Shine and Wall 2008)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 11eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5–17eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
e..g, Krysko et al. 2019
5-15 (Beane et al. 2010, Krysko et al. 2019), 6-10 (Witz and Wilson 1993 - but up to 15 follicles), 10 (Gras-Riedel 1993; n=1)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Anguimoprha
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1766
- Type locality
- USA
Keeping one
4 ft × 4 ft × 2 ft 6 in(122 × 122 × 77 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 6 in (15 cm) deep.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
Burrows, so substrate deep enough to dig in matters as much as floor area.
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 12 in (306 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 73 °F (23 °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
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.
11kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 92 g, the heaviest recorded for Eastern Glass 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 · adult female, mean
- — 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
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — 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
- — 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 Anguidae
- Anzuetoi Arboreal Alligator Lizard
- Argueta Arboreal Alligator Lizard
- Asian Glass Lizard
- Baja California Legless Lizard
- Bakersfield Legless Lizard
- Banded Arboreal Alligator Lizard
- Bogert's Arboreal Alligator Lizard
- Brilliant Arboreal Alligator Lizard
- Buettikofer's Glass Lizard
- California Legless Lizard
- Campbell's Alligator Lizard
- Cedros Island Alligator Lizard
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). Ophisaurus ventralis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ophisaurus-ventralis
@misc{ophisaurus_ventralis_2026,
title = {Ophisaurus ventralis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ophisaurus-ventralis}
}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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.