Reptilia · Squamata
Sphenomorphus tridigitusBourret, 1939
Three-toed Forest Skink
No photograph of this species exists under a license anyone may reuse. It gets the same page regardless.
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night skink from the Oriental region, reaching 47 mm snout to vent.
Once published as Siaphos tridigitum, Siaphos tridigitus, Sphenomorphus tridigitatus — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Sphenomorphus
- Grows to
- 47.2mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives
- Terrestrial
- Weighs up to
- 0.52g
- greatest
Longer than only 16% 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
29 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 1.4, and Body mass (greatest) as 0.5 — 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
- Near Threatened
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2017
- Red List criteria
- B1ab(iii)
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Reduced
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 47.2mm1.75 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 45.8mm1.75 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 37.6mm1.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 16.5mm0.6 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 0.52g0.02 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasureddisputed
- 1.42g0.05 oz
Le et al. 2020b (max 47.2 mm, female mean 45.8 mm)
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
largely converted from length by allometry in the source
How it lives
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 940–1830m
- Range size
- 19,391km²
- Density
- 100–1900per hectare
Nocturnal? (Das 2010 says "daytime spent in concealment"), collected in the morning (Le et al. 2020b) - active?
Terrestrial and Leaf Litter (e.g., Heatwole and Stuart 2008, Le et al. 2020b)
940-1470 (Heatwole and Stuart 2008; no animals found at 400m), 1300-1825 (Le et al. 2020b)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Bourret
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1939
- Type locality
- Vietnam
Keeping one
7.5 in × 7.5 in × 4.75 in(19 × 19 × 12 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 1.75 in (47.2 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 Three-toed Forest Skink. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
0kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 1 g, the heaviest recorded for Three-toed Forest 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 · 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 it hunts
- — Reproduction
- — 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
- — Population trend
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest 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). Sphenomorphus tridigitus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/sphenomorphus-tridigitus
@misc{sphenomorphus_tridigitus_2026,
title = {Sphenomorphus tridigitus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/sphenomorphus-tridigitus}
}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.