Reptilia · Squamata
Pogona vitticepsAhl, 1926
Central Bearded Dragon
Photograph by Frank C. Müller, Baden-Baden, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
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A day-active, omnivorous lizard from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 250 mm snout to vent.
Once published as Amphibolurus vitticeps — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Agamidae › Pogona
- Grows to
- 250mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 18years
Longer than 97% of all agamids 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 32 to 418 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
44 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
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 18years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 32.7–35.2°C91–95 °F
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 34.6°C94 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 32.3–36.9°C90–98 °F
Slavens and Slavens 1999, Snider and Bowler 1992: 10 and almost 2 months, Tacutu et al. 2013 (anage): 12, anonymous referee of Stark et al. 2019: 16-18 years in captivity
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 250mm9.75 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 155.8mm6.25 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 152.6mm6 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 39mm1.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 40mm1.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 574.9g1.3 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 88.2g3.1 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 3.05g0.11 oz
max 250 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
- Omnivorous
- How it hunts
- Mixed
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Desert, Forest, Savanna, Shrubland
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 82–612m
- Range size
- 2,469,211km²
arthropods, 4.8% plants (Henle 1989c) / 68-96% plants, the rest arthropods and lizards (Ctenophorus nuchalis), mainly arthropods, also plants and vertebrates (Robertson and Coventry 2019), "generalist" (Chiacchio et al. 2020)
Sit and Wait / widely foraging (Henle 1989c, Chiacchio et al. 2020)
e.g., Swan et al. 2017, Robertson and Coventry 2019, Swan 2020, Chiacchio et al. 2020
Semi Arboreal (e.g., Swan et al. 2017, Gray et al. 2019)/arboreal & Saxicolous (Bartlett and Bartlett 2009), see also MacMillen et al. 1989/arboreal and terrestrial (Swan 2020) / arboreal (Chiacchio et al. 2020)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 20.75eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 4–68eggs
- Mean clutch
- 13.5–28eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 3.5per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–5per year
- First breeds at
- 24months
to 150 eggs a year with over 35 in a clutch - so at least 5, dragons in general lay 4-6 times a year (Bartlett and Bartlett 2009), 7-50 (Swan and Watharow 2005), 11-68 (Brown 2012), 7-35 (Robertson and Coventry 2019), max 35 (Melville and Wilson 2019)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Acrodontia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Ahl
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1926
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
3 ft 3 in × 3 ft 3 in × 3 ft 3 in(100 × 100 × 100 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 9.75 in (250 mm), at 4 × 4 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 91–95 °F (32.7–35.2 °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.
56kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 575 g, the heaviest recorded for Central Bearded Dragon — 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
1 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 8 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
What each pairing produces → · Two genes at once →
- The anatomical placode in reptile scale morphogenesis indicates shared ancestry among skin appendages in amniotes. — Sci Adv 2016
- Citrusbreeder consensus
Yellow body colour, produced the same way.
- Dunnerbreeder consensus
Scales pointing in varied directions rather than lying in rows, with a scattered pattern and often a longer tail.
- Hypomelanisticbreeder consensus
Reduced dark pigment, giving lighter colour and clear, unpigmented nails.
- Leatherbackbreeder consensus
Greatly reduced scale size, giving a smooth back and brighter colour.
Documented health finding. Two copies of this gene produce a Silkback, an animal with essentially no scales. Silkbacks are widely documented to shed with difficulty, to be prone to skin damage and retained shed around the toes and tail, to lose moisture faster than a scaled animal, and to be more sensitive to handling and to UV exposure. Many keepers and welfare bodies consider the combination one that should not be produced.
- Redbreeder consensus
Red body colour, intensified over generations by choosing the reddest parents.
- Translucentbreeder consensus
Semi-transparent skin and spikes, with solid black eyes in many animals.
- Witblitsbreeder consensus
Patternless, in muted greys and browns.
- Zerobreeder consensus
Patternless and near-white, with no yellow or orange.
Other inherited traits
Inherited characteristics and conditions recorded for this species. These are not morphs — nobody breeds for them.
- Sex determination2 references
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
- — 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
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
Others in Agamidae
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). Pogona vitticeps. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pogona-vitticeps
@misc{pogona_vitticeps_2026,
title = {Pogona vitticeps},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pogona-vitticeps}
}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.