Reptilia · Squamata
Sepsina angolensisBocage, 1866
Angola Skink
No photograph of this species exists under a license anyone may reuse. It gets the same page regardless.
An active by day or night skink from the Afrotropic region, reaching 91 mm snout to vent.
Once published as Scelotus angolensis — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Sepsina
- Grows to
- 91mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives
- Fossorial, terrestrial
- Weighs up to
- 5.03g
- greatest
Longer than 70% 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
28 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Two of these figures disagree
Body mass (adult female, mean) is given as 5.3, and Body mass (greatest) as 5 — but an average female cannot outweigh the heaviest animal recorded. They come from different sources and both are shown exactly as those sources give them.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2019
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Reduced
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 91mm3.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 91mm3.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 91mm3.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 5.03g0.18 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasureddisputed
- 5.3g0.19 oz
max 91 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
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Fossorial, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Rocky, Savanna
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Range size
- 1,263,755km²
active (Pietersen et al. 2021)
During the day found racking leave litter and digging, found in traps next day, many tracks in sand (Werner Conradie; pers comm. June 2020), "Tracks of these fossorial species can be seen in the early mornings on sandy soil." (Conradie et al. 2022c)
Leaf Litter and fossorial / fossorial (Pietersen et al. 2021, Conradie et al. 2022c)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
Camilla Whittington & James Van Dyke, pers comm. July 2021
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Bocage
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1866
- Type locality
- Angola
Keeping one
14.5 in × 14.5 in × 9 in(36 × 36 × 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 (91 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 Angola Skink. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 5 g, the heaviest recorded for Angola 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 · 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 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 the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Average clutch
- — Smallest clutch recorded
- — Largest clutch recorded
- — 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
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
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). Sepsina angolensis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/sepsina-angolensis
@misc{sepsina_angolensis_2026,
title = {Sepsina angolensis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/sepsina-angolensis}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- 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.