Reptilia · Squamata
Tympanocryptis pinguicollaMitchell, 1948
Victorian Grassland Earless Dragon
Photograph by Frederick McCoy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating lizard from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 65 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Agamidae › Tympanocryptis
- Grows to
- 65mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 5years
Longer than only 19% of all agamids 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 32 to 418 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
36 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
- Possibly extinct
- Conservation status
- Endangered
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2017
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- B2ab(ii,iii,v)
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 5years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 34.8–35.5°C95–96 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 26.9–30.4°C80–87 °F
usually 1 in nature, more than 5 in captivity (Robertson and Coventry 2019)
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 65mm2.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 55.3mm2.25 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 56.3mm2.25 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 22.5mm0.9 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 8.77g0.31 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Shai Meiri, unpublished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
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Grassland
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Range size
- 8173km²
- Density
- 2.4–19.8per hectare
arthropods (Robertson and Coventry 2019)
Robertson and Coventry 2019
e.g.,Robertson and Coventry 2019, Swan 2020
(e.g., Swan et al. 2017, Gray et al. 2019), terrestrial, sometimes climb (Robertson and Coventry 2019)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 4.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 3–6eggs
3-6 (Robertson and Coventry 2019)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Acrodontia
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Mitchell
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1948
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
Victorian Grassland Earless Dragon 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.
No enclosure size, temperature or feeding figure is given for this species. What is recorded about the animal stays on this page above; advice on keeping one does not, because there is none to keep.
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.
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 9 g, the heaviest recorded for Victorian Grassland Earless Dragon — 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 · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — 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
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
Others in Agamidae
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). Tympanocryptis pinguicolla. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/tympanocryptis-pinguicolla
@misc{tympanocryptis_pinguicolla_2026,
title = {Tympanocryptis pinguicolla},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/tympanocryptis-pinguicolla}
}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.