Reptilia · Squamata
Timon lepidusDaudin, 1802
Jewelled Lizard
Photograph by F. Bemmerlein-Lux, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A day-active, omnivorous lizard from the Palearctic region, reaching 260 mm snout to vent.
Also called Ocellated Lizard.
Once published as Lacerta lepida — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Lacertidae › Timon
- Grows to
- 260mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 34years
Longer than 99% of all species in Lacertidae 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 35 to 444 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
48 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
- Near Threatened
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2008
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 34years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 31.7–33.5°C89–92 °F
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 30.4°C87 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 27.8–32.2°C82–90 °F
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009: 17, Castanet 1994: 17; Slavens and Slavens 1999: 14.5, Jesus 2012: 28 (citing Philipp Wagner, pers. com.), Bauwens and Diaz-Uriarte 1997: 59 months; Bohme and Esser 2015: maximum 11 in nature, nearly 35 (so I'll conservatively call it 34) in captivity, 18.5 (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
- 260mm10 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 149.6mm6 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 150mm6 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 39.65mm1.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 39.7mm1.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 383.3g13.5 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 99.63g3.5 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 75.4g2.7 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 1.55g0.05 oz
max 260 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
- Omnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Shrubland
- Biome
- Mediterranean
- Active season · months of the year
- 6–7months
- Region
- Palearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2500m
- Range size
- 715,248km²
- Home range · largest recorded
- 1699m2
(e.g., Greene 1982 - plant material and vertebrates, Street 1979, Corti and Cascio 2002 - earhtworms, snails, reptiles, mammals, birds, Rogner 1997b: insects, vertebrates and fruit, Le Berre 1989 - bird eggs, insects, small vertebrates), mainly fruits in the end of summer in one population (Corti and Cascio 2002) / mainly insectivorous, but also consumes vertebrates, fruit and carrion (Mateo 2008), Bischoff et al.1984 table 8, invertebrate and young T. lepidus (Busack and Visnaw 1989), 85% arthropods, 15% plants (Barnagaud et al. 2020)
Active (Cavalcanti et al. 2023)
mostly Diurnal (Corti and Cascio 2002) / heliothermic (Garrick 2008)/diurnal (100%, Barnagaud et al. 2020), Diurnal (e.g., Escoriza and Amat 2021)
variable (mainly terrestrial, also saxicolous and arboreal, Corti and Cascio 2002), 80% terrestrial, 20% arboreal (Barnagaud et al. 2020)
max 2100 (Hallmann and Griebeler 2015)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 13.7eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–25eggs
- Mean clutch
- 10.5–16.9eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
- First breeds at
- 19–34months
- Age at first breeding · female
- 912days
5-22 (Maso and Pijoan 2011), 13.38 (Hallmann and Griebeler 2015), 6-23 (Hraoui-Bloquet 1987), 1.5 (Barnagaud et al. 2020, I guess they mixed it with Tarentola mauritanica for which they report 9!)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Laterata
- Subspecies
- Timon lepidus ibericus (LÓPEZ-SEOANE 1885) Timon lepidus lepidus (DAUDIN 1802) Timon lepidus oteroi (CASTROVIEJO & MATEO 1998)
- Described by
- Daudin
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1802
- Type locality
- France
Keeping one
3 ft 5 in × 3 ft 5 in × 3 ft 5 in(104 × 104 × 104 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 10 in (260 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 89–92 °F (31.7–33.5 °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.
39kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 383 g, the heaviest recorded for Jewelled 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.
Morphs
1 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 0 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
Information presented here was moved from OMIA:001199-8523 : Coat colour, extension in Lacerta [20/09/2023]. Lacerta lepida is a synonym for Timon lepidus.
- Association of Mc1r variants with ecologically relevant phenotypes in the European ocellated lizard, Lacerta lepida. — J Evol Biol 2011
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
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — 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
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Lacertidae
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). Timon lepidus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/timon-lepidus
@misc{timon_lepidus_2026,
title = {Timon lepidus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/timon-lepidus}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- 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.