Reptilia · Squamata
Varanus exanthematicusBosc, 1792
Savannah Monitor
Photograph by KKPCW, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating monitor lizard from the Afrotropic region, reaching 750 mm snout to vent.
Once published as Varanus ocellatus — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Varanidae › Varanus
- Grows to
- 750mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 17years
Longer than 83% of all monitor lizards 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 116.4 to 1,570 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
43 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 (a typical adult) is given as 35,500, and Body mass (greatest) as 9,995.9 — but a typical adult cannot outweigh the heaviest one ever 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
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2012
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 17years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 35.5°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 34°C93 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 31.5–36.5°C89–98 °F
De Magalhaes & Costa 2009: 12.7; Slavens and Slavens 1999: 10 and 6 months; 17 (De Lisle 1996, Mendyk 2015)
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 750mm2 ft 6 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 342mm13.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 342mm13.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 79.75mm3.25 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 79.8mm3.25 in
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 9g0.32 oz
- Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
- 9995.9g22 lb
- Body mass · a typical adultdisputed
- 35,500g78 lb
max 750 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
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Savanna, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1400m
- Range size
- 7,554,257km²
- Density
- 0.1–0.5per hectare
Vertebrates and invertebrates / mostly invertebrates (Pianka and King 2004) / frogs, arthropods and molluscs (Losos and Greene 1988), "diets consist largely of orthopterans but they also eat frogs, snaiIs and scorpions, together with lesser quantities of beetles and wasps." (Bennett 1995), "mainly preys on arthropods (scorpions, millipedes, larger insects and their larvae), snails, amphibians, lizards eggs (also of their own kind), and rodents" (Auliya and Koch 2020)
e.g., Bowker 1984
e.g., Auliya and Koch 2020, Spawls et al. 2023
Terrestrial and Arboreal / terrestrial (Auliya and Koch 2020, Spawls et al. 2023)
0-1400 (e.g., Spawls et al. 2018, Spawls et al. 2023)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 19.05eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 6–50eggs
- Mean clutch
- 18–20.1eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 3per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–3per year
- First breeds at
- 24–48months
mean 18 (Du et al. 2014), Bennett 1995 (max 41), 6-20 (Spawls et al. 2018, Spawls et al. 2023), 6-29 up to 50 in captivity (Auliya and Koch 2020)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Anguimoprha
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Bosc
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1792
- Type locality
- Senegal
Keeping one
9 ft 10 in × 9 ft 10 in × 6 ft 2 in(300 × 300 × 188 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 2 ft 6 in (750 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 96 °F (35.5 °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.
705kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 9,996 g, the heaviest recorded for Savannah Monitor — 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
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 1 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- Natural variationbreeder consensus
How light or dark an animal is and how strongly the pale ocelli show along the back. This varies with the population an import came from, with age, and with how warm and hydrated the animal is.
Worth knowing. No single-gene morph is established in this species. Savannah monitors reach the trade overwhelmingly as wild-caught imports rather than as captive-bred animals, so no morph scene has developed and colour differences track where an animal came from rather than anything heritable being selected for.
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
- — Venomous
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Varanidae
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). Varanus exanthematicus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/varanus-exanthematicus
@misc{varanus_exanthematicus_2026,
title = {Varanus exanthematicus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/varanus-exanthematicus}
}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.