Reptilia · Squamata
Pseudopus apodusPallas, 1775
European Glass Lizard
Photograph by Vsevolod Rudyi, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating lizard from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 610 mm snout to vent.
Once published as Ophisaurus apodus — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Anguidae › Pseudopus
- Grows to
- 610mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 54years
Longer than 99% 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
47 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
- 2016
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 54years
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 23.45°C74 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 18.6–28.3°C65–83 °F
Carey and Judge 2000: 10.7, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009: 54, Amitai and Bouskila 2001>25 in captivity, Slavens and Slavens 1999 (21 years, 11 months); Petzold 2008 (24), Werner 2016 (25)
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 610mm2 ft
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 389.8mm15.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 389.8mm15.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 100mm4 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 82.5mm3.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 677.9g1.5 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 450g15.9 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 397.9g14 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 7.6g0.27 oz
Jablonski et al. 2021b (max 610 mm)
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
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Shrubland
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 4–11months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 3200m
- Range size
- 1,920,880km²
- Density
- 50–110per hectare
Invertebrates and Vertebrates (e.g., Crocidura, lizards and snakes, Corti and Cascio 2002, snails and even small mammals and birds, Valakos et al. 2004, see also Stille and Stille 2017, see also Dunayev and Orlova 2023), "occasionally fruits" (Disi et al.), see also Rifai et al. 2005, mostly insects (of these mainly beetles), also other arthropods and gastropods (Cicek et al. 2014 - who also review the literature and give account of vertebrates), mostly gastropods (Speybroeck et al. 2016), invertbrates, vertebrates and eggs (Kamali 2020)
Cicek et al. 2014
(e.g., Speybroeck et al. 2016, Telenchev et al. 2017, Jablonski 2018, Kamali 2020, Jablonski et al. 2021b), essentially diurnal (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
e.g., Werner 2016, Jablonski 2018, pers. obs., Jablonski et al. 2021b
max 800 (Speybroeck et al. 2016), max 2400 (Kwet 2015), 1-164 (Kukushkin and Dovgal 2018), 650-2300 (Showler 2018), -24 to 16 (Mazanaeva and Askenderov 2020), 0-1300 (Kamali 2020), 50m below sea level to 1000 above for levantinus (Jablonski et al. 2021b), max 2300 (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Gestation or incubation
- 42days
- Average clutch
- 8.65eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–15eggs
- Mean clutch
- 8–9.3eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Clutches a year
- 0.25–1per year
- First breeds at
- 24–48months
- Age at first breeding · female
- 730days
10-15 (Bar and Haimovitch 2012), 6-10, mean 8.5 (Ataev et al. 1994), 5-10 (Stojanov et al. 2011), 6-12 (Werner 2016, Speybroeck et al. 2016, Kwet 2015), 3-12, mean 9.3 (TAU experimental zoo data, see also Jablonski et al. 2021b), 7-12 (Mohammadalizadegan and Sardari 2022), 6-11 (Kukushkin 2022), 6-10 (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Anguimoprha
- Subspecies
- Pseudopus apodus apodus (PALLAS 1775) Pseudopus apodus levantinus JABLONSKI, RIBEIRO-JUNIOR, MEIRI, MAZA, MIKULÍČEK & JANZIK 2021 Pseudopus apodus thracius (OBST 1978)
- Described by
- Pallas
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1775
- Type locality
- Russia
Keeping one
8 ft × 8 ft × 5 ft(244 × 244 × 153 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 2 ft (610 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
Active animals measured in the wild averaged 74 °F (23.5 °C).
Mean body temperature of active individuals measured in nature. 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.
64kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 678 g, the heaviest recorded for European 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
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — 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
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — 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). Pseudopus apodus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pseudopus-apodus
@misc{pseudopus_apodus_2026,
title = {Pseudopus apodus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pseudopus-apodus}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- 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.