Reptilia · Squamata
Pygopus lepidopodusLacépède, 1804
Southern Scaly-foot
Photograph by Connor Margetts, CC BY, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating lizard from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 274 mm snout to vent.
Also called Common Scaly Foot (scalyfoot).
Reptilia › Squamata › Pygopodidae › Pygopus
- Grows to
- 274mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives
- Fossorial, terrestrial
Longer than 94% of all species in Pygopodidae 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 64.5 to 315 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
36 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
- None
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 274mm11 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 179.2mm7 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 179.2mm7 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 59mm2.25 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 59mm2.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 20.1g0.71 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 3.3g0.12 oz
max 274 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
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Fossorial, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Shrubland
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 75–301m
- Range size
- 3,927,516km²
Arthropods (mostly spiders, Shea 1993, see Swan and Watharow 2005, Robertson and Coventry 2019, Shine 1986), occasionally skinks (Robertson and Coventry 2019)
Active foraging
Diurnal but nocturnal when hot (Wilson and Swan 2003, Bush et al. 2010) / cathemeral (Greer 1989, Swan 2020) / bask but active at night and crepuscular (Bush et al. 2007)/Diurnal (Swan et al. 2017), crepuscular, mostly diurnal in Victoria but may be active at night in warm weather (Robertson and Coventry 2019), diurnal and crepuscular (Shine 1986)
Terrestrial, also digs (Henkel 2010, p16)/"in ground debris and low shrubs" (Swan et al. 2017), terrestrial butmay climb (Robertson and Coventry 2019)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 2eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1–3per year
usually 2 (Swan and Watharow 2005), 2 (Porter 2008, Robertson and Coventry 2019)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Lacépède
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1804
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
3 ft 7 in × 3 ft 7 in × 2 ft 3 in(110 × 110 × 69 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 5.5 in (14 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 11 in (274 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 Southern Scaly-foot. 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 20 g, the heaviest recorded for Southern Scaly-foot — 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 · adult female, mean
- — 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 the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Clutches in a year
- — 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
Others in Pygopodidae
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). Pygopus lepidopodus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pygopus-lepidopodus
@misc{pygopus_lepidopodus_2026,
title = {Pygopus lepidopodus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pygopus-lepidopodus}
}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.