Reptilia · Squamata
Tarentola mauritanicaLinnaeus, 1758
Moorish Gecko
Photograph by nbasargin, CC BY, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating gecko from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 86 mm snout to vent.
Also called Common Wall Gecko.
Reptilia › Squamata › Phyllodactylidae › Tarentola
- Grows to
- 86mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 14years
Longer than 77% of all species in Phyllodactylidae 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 34 to 179 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
46 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
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2014
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 14years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 23.4–31.6°C74–89 °F
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 22.6°C73 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 15–30.2°C59–86 °F
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009: 14 in captivity, Castanet 1994, Werner et al. 1993 ( 2 years, 5 months; 14 years in Table 2); Slavens and Slavens 1999: 14, Hughes 1988: 7 and 5 months, Cicek et al. 2015: 14 and ecological longevity 8-9, 10.7 (Hallmann and Griebeler 2015)
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 86mm3.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 52.8mm2 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 52.8mm2 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 20mm0.8 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 20mm0.8 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 16.41g0.58 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 6.54g0.23 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.5g0.02 oz
max 86 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
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Mixed
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous
- Habitat
- Rocky, Shrubland
- Biome
- Mediterranean
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2500m
- Range size
- 1,852,593km²
- Density
- 3.89per hectare
Arthropods, even large spiders (Corti and Cascio 2002) and lizards (Bauer 1990, Pellitteri-Rosa et al. 2015, Stille and Stille 2017), arthropods and small vertebrates (Masood and Asiry 2012), arthropods (Giulia et al. 2019), invertebrates (del Marmol et al. 2019)
ambush and foraging (e.g., del Marmol et al. 2019)/ active (Hoder et al. 2006)
Nocturnal (e.g., Ibrahim 2008)/ moving and basking by day, hunting at night (Loveridge 1947, del Marmol et al. 2019), nocturnal and crepuscular, sometime basks or even diurnal (Corti and Cascio 2002)/cathemeral (Frankenberg 1978, Delaugerre 1984) / mostly nocturnal (Werner 1973, Schleich 1987), less nocturnal than H. turcicus ) / cathemeral (Arad et al. 1997)/mainly nocturnal; (Masood and Asiry 2012), Stephen Buasck, pers. comm. July 2019: "most of my other experience with them (and this runs into several dozens of hours) has been with them during daylight hours (although I have been in their habitat during nighttime hours as well). They bask in the open (in situations allowing such) between sunrise and mid-day, and then again in late afternoon -- much like lacertids -- depending upon conditions. And I find them active at all hours of the day in southern Spain -- rarely, by the way, in hiding. But they will seek shelter early during the heat of summer.", 20% diurnal (Barnagaud et al. 2020), cathemeral (in Lipari, mostly diurnal, elsewhere nocturnal - Yuval Itescu pers. comm. July 2023)
Saxicolous (e.g., Stille and Stille 2017)and Arboreal
max 1283 (Hallmann and Griebeler 2015), max 2350 (Speybroeck et al. 2016), 0-2500 (e.g., del Marmol et al. 2019)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Temperature
- Average clutch
- 2eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 8.5per year
- Clutches a year
- 2–15per year
- First breeds at
- 12–60months
2 (Hallmann and Griebeler 2015, Werner 1995, Stille and Stille 2017, del Marmol et al. 2019), 1-2 (Schleich 1987), 9 (Barnagaud et al. 2020; I assume they mixed it with Timon lepidus for which they list 1.5)
(Hallmann and Griebeler 2015, Werner 1995, Stille and Stille 2017, del Marmol et al. 2019), 1-2 (Schleich 1987), 9 (Barnagaud et al. 2020; I assume they mixed it with Timon lepidus for which they list 1.5)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- Tarentola mauritanica juliae JOGER 1984 Tarentola mauritanica mauritanica (LINNAEUS 1758) Tarentola mauritanica pallida GENIEZ, ESCATLLAR, CROCHET, MATEO & BONS 1999
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1758
- Type locality
- Mauritania
Keeping one
13.5 in × 13.5 in × 13.5 in(34 × 34 × 34 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 and climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Recorded both on the ground and climbing, so this is the larger of the two rules in every dimension.
Lives on rock, so stable hard surfaces and basking ledges suit it.
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 (86 mm), at 4 × 4 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 74–89 °F (23.4–31.6 °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.
2kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 16 g, the heaviest recorded for Moorish Gecko — 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 · adult female, mean
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Red List criteria
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Phyllodactylidae
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). Tarentola mauritanica. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/tarentola-mauritanica
@misc{tarentola_mauritanica_2026,
title = {Tarentola mauritanica},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/tarentola-mauritanica}
}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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.