Reptilia · Squamata
Saara hardwickiiGray, 1827
Indian spiny-tailed lizard
Photograph by Ramit Singal, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, plant-eating lizard from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 250 mm snout to vent.
Also called Hardwick's spiny-tailed lizard.
Once published as Uromastyx hardwickii — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Agamidae › Saara
- Grows to
- 250mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives
- Terrestrial
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
34 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
- Vulnerable
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2019
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- A2cd
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 250mm9.75 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 155.5mm6 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 175mm7 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 574.9g1.3 lb
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
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Desert, Forest, Grassland, Shrubland
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Active season · months of the year
- 7–8months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 450m
- Range size
- 1,111,600km²
- Density
- 1–114per hectare
(adults), juveniles eat insects (e.g., Das et al. 2012), Wilms 2005: omnivorous, mostly herbivorous, Das and Das 2017: grasses and insects, 1-2% plants (Bendami et al. 2018), "purely herbivore feeding on leaves, twigs, flowers, fruits, some time feed on insects, nymphs and locusts" (Ali et al. 2020 - what happened to purity?), omnivorous (Singh et al. 2021)
Das and Das 2017, Singh et al. 2021
Terrestrial, terrestrial "as well as fossorial" (Das and Das 2017), see also Ali et al. 2020
190-290 (Agarwal et al. 2015)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 12.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5–20eggs
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
up to 15 (Masroor 2012, Das and Das 2017), 5-18 (Wilms 2005), 6-16 (Ali et al. 2020)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Acrodontia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Gray
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1827
- Type locality
- India
Keeping one
Indian spiny-tailed lizard is assessed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.
3 ft 3 in × 3 ft 3 in × 2 ft 1 in(100 × 100 × 63 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 9.75 in (250 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 Indian spiny-tailed lizard. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
Prey size does not apply. A herbivore's diet is judged on fibre, on the ratio of calcium to phosphorus, and on avoiding plants high in oxalates.
The animal does not take prey items. This is established practice, not a measurement.
56kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 575 g, the heaviest recorded for Indian spiny-tailed 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 · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — 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
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — 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
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
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). Saara hardwickii. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/saara-hardwickii
@misc{saara_hardwickii_2026,
title = {Saara hardwickii},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/saara-hardwickii}
}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.