Reptilia · Squamata
Scelotes guentheriBoulenger, 1887
Günther's Dwarf BurrowingSkink
Photograph by Dylan Leonard, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
A burrowing skink from the Afrotropic region, reaching 108 mm snout to vent.
Also called Bourquin’s Dwarf Burrowing Skink.
Once published as Scelotes bourquini — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Scelotes
- Grows to
- 108mm
- greatest recorded
- Lives
- Fossorial
- Weighs up to
- 7.75g
- greatest
- Red List
- Extinct
Longer than 82% 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
25 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
- Extinct
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2021
- Population trend
- Decreasing
as reported by the IUCN Red List
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Hind legs only
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 108mm4.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 7.75g0.27 oz
Shai Meiri, unpublished
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Where it lives
- Fossorial
- Biome
- Mangroves
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 950–1250m
- Range size
- 10km²
(Maritz and Alexander 2009), fossorial and cryptic (Broadley 1994 for S bourquini)
950-1250 (Broadley 1994, for S bourquini)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 5
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5eggs
the single figure reported — Oskyrko, Mi, Meiri, and Du, 2024, Sci. Data, 11:243
as S bourquini
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Boulenger
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1887
- Type locality
- South Africa
Keeping one
Günther's Dwarf BurrowingSkink is assessed as Extinct on the IUCN Red List. No living animal is known. Anything below describes what was recorded of the species while it existed, and it is here because a reference that quietly drops a species it has lost is a worse record than one that keeps it.
No enclosure size, temperature or feeding figure is given for this species. What is recorded about the animal stays on this page above; advice on keeping one does not, because there is none to keep.
Feeding
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 8 g, the heaviest recorded for Günther's Dwarf BurrowingSkink — 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 female mean
- — 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 female · snout to vent
- — 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
- — Diet
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — Active
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — 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
- — 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
- — Habitat
- — 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). Scelotes guentheri. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/scelotes-guentheri
@misc{scelotes_guentheri_2026,
title = {Scelotes guentheri},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/scelotes-guentheri}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.