Reptilia · Squamata
Smaug giganteusSmith, 1844
Sungazer
Photograph by Andrew Hankey, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating lizard from the Afrotropic region, reaching 220 mm snout to vent.
Also called Giant Dragon Lizard, Giant Girdled Lizard.
Once published as Chamaesaura giganteus, Cordylus giganteus — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Cordylidae › Smaug
- Grows to
- 220mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 25years
Longer than 99% of all species in Cordylidae 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 68 to 220 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
44 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
- 2021
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- A2bcd+4bcd
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 25years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 30°C
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009: 24.9, Honegger 1969, Slavens and Slavens 1999, reach maximum length in 11th year, live up to 25 years in captivity and "Anecdotal observations from various landowners, who have kept Sungazers in enclosures in the natural environment within the distribution of the species, have claimed maximum longevity of 35 years." but "in absence of data confirming these claims, I have assumed the maximum longevity for the species as 25 years." (Parusnath 2014),
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 220mm8.75 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 188.2mm7.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 188.2mm7.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 60mm2.25 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 60mm2.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 457g1 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 43.83g1.5 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 7.8g0.28 oz
max 220 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
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Grassland
- Biome
- Montane Grasslands & Savannas
- Active season · months of the year
- 8months
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 1260–1840m
- Range size
- 119,790km²
- Density
- 1.83–29.3per hectare
Arthropods and small vertebrates (e.g., Rabiega 2014)/ arthropods (Parusnath 2014)
("extreme ambush (sit and wait) foragers" (Parusnath 2014)
e.g., Stanton-Jones et al. 2018, Parusnath 2014
1260-1840 (Parusnath 2014)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 2.1eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–5eggs
- Mean clutch
- 1.5–2.7eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 0.63per year
- Clutches a year
- 0.25–1per year
- First breeds at
- 60months
1.5 (Van Wilgen and Richardson 2012), 1-3, rarely 4 exceptionally 5 (Reissig 2014), 1-2 (Branch 2016), 2-3 (Parusnath 2014)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Smith
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1844
- Type locality
- South Africa
Keeping one
Sungazer 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.
2 ft 11 in × 2 ft 11 in × 21.5 in(88 × 88 × 55 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 8.75 in (220 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 86 °F (30 °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.
45kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 457 g, the heaviest recorded for Sungazer — 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 temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — 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
Others in Cordylidae
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). Smaug giganteus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/smaug-giganteus
@misc{smaug_giganteus_2026,
title = {Smaug giganteus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/smaug-giganteus}
}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.