Reptilia · Squamata
Shinisaurus crocodilurusAhl, 1930
Crocodile Lizard
Identification not confirmed. One observer recorded this animal as this species and no one has since agreed, so the photograph may show a different animal.
Photograph by Matthew Inabinett, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A day-active, meat-eating lizard from the Oriental region, reaching 165 mm snout to vent.
Also called Chinese Crocodile Lizard, Chinese crocodile lizard.
Reptilia › Squamata › Shinisauridae › Shinisaurus
- Grows to
- 165.4mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 11.4years
What is known
40 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
- Endangered
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2014
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- B1ab(ii,iii,iv,v)
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 11.4years
Slavens and Slavens 1999
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 165.4mm6.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 150.8mm6 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 150.8mm6 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 34.8mm1.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 83.04g2.9 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 3.82g0.13 oz
Shai Meiri, unpublished
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
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Semi-aquatic
- Habitat
- Forest, Wetlands
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 6–10months
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 50–1750m
- Range size
- 90,835km²
- Home range · largest recorded
- 10.9m2
aquatic invertebrates (e.g., arthropods and worms) and vertebrates (fish and amphibians, e.g., Ziegler et al. 2008), see also van Schingen et al. 2016, invertebrates and small vertebrates (Ziegler et al. 2019)
(e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016), but "Animals were found to be inactive during large periods of the day and the whole night (unpubl. data) (Table 5). Crocodile lizards were also reported to be diurnal in China, but spending 98 5% of the day inactive on a perch above a water body or hidden during summer" (Ziegler et al. 2019)
(e.g., Ziegler et al. 2008, Ziegler et al. 2019, Jenssen and Sy 2022, van Schingen-Khan et al. 2022: "first activities in S. crocodilurus vietnamensis that could be related to temperature occurred at sun rise (around 5:00 h), while the last activity patterns were detected between 20:00 and 22:00 h. Activity peaks could be detected in all four animals between 9:00 and 12:00 h")/ crepuscular (Zhao et al. 1999)
Terrestrial, Arboreal and semi-aquatic, aquatic (Mesquita et al. 2016), van Schingen-Khan et al. 2022 and arboreal (van Schingen-Khan et al. 2022), arboreal (Jenssen and Sy 2022)
400-500 (van Schingen et al. 2016), 131-198 (van Schingen et al. 2016b), 50-1500 (Ziegler et al. 2019), 200-1500 (Jenssen and Sy 2022), 900-1750 (Luo et al. 2022)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 6.3eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–15eggs
- Mean clutch
- 6.3eggs
- Clutches a year
- 0.5–1per year
- First breeds at
- 24–48months
2-12 (IUCN), mean 6.3 (Mesquita et al. 2016), 6 (Kudryavtsev and Vassiliev 1998; n=1), 7-15 (van Schingen-Khan et al. 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Anguimoprha
- Subspecies
- Shinisaurus crocodilurus crocodilurus AHL 1930 Shinisaurus crocodilurus vietnamensis SCHINGEN et al. 2016
- Described by
- Ahl
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1930
- Type locality
- China
Keeping one
Crocodile Lizard is assessed as Endangered 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.
2 ft 2 in × 2 ft 2 in × 16.5 in(66 × 66 × 41 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 6.5 in (165.4 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 Crocodile Lizard. 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.
10kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 83 g, the heaviest recorded for Crocodile 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 · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — 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
- — 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
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Active in
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). Shinisaurus crocodilurus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/shinisaurus-crocodilurus
@misc{shinisaurus_crocodilurus_2026,
title = {Shinisaurus crocodilurus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/shinisaurus-crocodilurus}
}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.