Reptilia · Squamata
Saiphos equalisGray, 1825
Three-toed Skink
Photograph by Oscar Dove, CC BY, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating skink from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 92 mm snout to vent.
Also called Yellow-bellied Three-toed Skink.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Saiphos
- Grows to
- 92mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives
- Fossorial, terrestrial
Longer than 71% of all skinks 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 24 to 500 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
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Reduced
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 16.7°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 18°C64 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 16.3–19.7°C61–67 °F
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 92mm3.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 76.3mm3 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 74.8mm3 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 25.55mm1 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 24mm0.9 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 5.17g0.18 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.28g0.01 oz
max 92 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
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Fossorial, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Shrubland
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 512–937m
- Range size
- 245,724km²
Invertebrates see Sources (general) column
Nocturnal and Crepuscular (Swanson 2007), Glenn Shea, pers. comm. (April 2020): "Cathemeral. I don't trust Swanson as a reference, but it has certainly been seen active by day in and around compost heaps (pers. Comm. Matt Greenlees). Cogger et al. (1983) also list it as nocturnal.", nocturnal (Beltran et al. 2020)
Fossorial and Leaf Litter / burrowing (Swan et al. 2017, Swan 2020) / fossorial (Beltran et al. 2020)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Mixed
- Average clutch
- 2.9eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–7eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2.7–3.1eggs
both oviparous and viviparous (Greer 2005, Pyron and Burbrink 2013: even in the same pregnancy! Laird et al. 2019, Beltran et al. 2020, Beltran et al. 2020b) / viviparous (Wilson and Swan 2008) / ovoviviparous (Swanson 2007)
1-4, mean 3 (Beltran et al. 2020a, n=21), 1-5 mean 3.0 (Beltran et al. 2020b - I wonder if I missed the 5 in the Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology piece but there is a good table in Journal of Comparative Physiology B, Beltran et al. 2020b, with a 5 neonate litter)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Gray
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1825
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
14.5 in × 14.5 in × 9 in(37 × 37 × 23 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better. Substrate at least 1.75 in (5 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 3.5 in (92 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 62 °F (16.7 °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.
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 5 g, the heaviest recorded for Three-toed Skink — 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
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Clutches in a year
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Population trend
- — 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 Scincidae
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). Saiphos equalis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/saiphos-equalis
@misc{saiphos_equalis_2026,
title = {Saiphos equalis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/saiphos-equalis}
}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.