Reptilia · Squamata
Varanus gouldiiGray, 1838
Sand Monitor
Photograph placed in the public domain, CC0, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating monitor lizard from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 670 mm snout to vent.
Also called Gould's Goanna.
Once published as Varanus flavirufus — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Varanidae › Varanus
- Grows to
- 670mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 18.3years
Longer than 79% 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
44 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
- 2017
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 18.3years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 35.1°C
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 31.5°C89 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 24.5–38.5°C76–101 °F
18 and 3 months (Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009, Slavens and Slavens 1999), Greer 1989: 6 and 10 months, 18 (Mendyk 2015)
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 670mm2 ft 2 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 298.8mm12 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 298.8mm12 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 88.5mm3.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 86.7mm3.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 6939.9g15 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 671.9g1.5 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 29.6g1 oz
max 670 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
- Desert, Forest, Grassland, Shrubland
- Biome
- Deserts & Xeric Shrublands
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 520m
- Range size
- 6,328,961km²
- Home range · largest recorded
- 334,000m2
Vertebrates and invertebrates: Mammals, lizards and reptile eggs, Arthropods, Carrion, also frogs and insects (Pengilley 1981), mostly reptiles and invertebrates, also mammals, birds, frogs and fishes; invertebrates and vertebrates (Cross et al. 2020), vertebrates, invertebrates and carrion (Auliya and Koch 2020)
e.g., Clemente et al. 2009, Mesquita et al. 2016, Robertson and Coventry 2019
(e.g., Gordon et al. 2010, Swan et al. 2017, Swan 2020, Lazzari et al. 2022), heliothermic (Robertson and Coventry 2019, Auliya and Koch 2020)
(e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016, Swan et al. 2017, Robertson and Coventry 2019, Cross et al. 2020, Swan 2020, Auliya and Koch 2020), occasionally climbs (Swan et al. 2017)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 7.81eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–20eggs
- Mean clutch
- 5.8–9.8eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
- First breeds at
- 18–36months
3-10 (Swan and Watharow 2005), mean 9.4 (Du et al. 2014), mean 9.81 (Mesquita et al. 2016), max 13 (Bennett 1995), 3-11 (Robertson and Coventry 2019), 3-20 mean 5.9 in the wild, 7.3 in captivity (Auliya and Koch 2020)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Anguimoprha
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Gray
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1838
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
8 ft 10 in × 8 ft 10 in × 5 ft 6 in(268 × 268 × 168 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 2 in (670 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 95 °F (35.1 °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.
510kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 6,940 g, the heaviest recorded for Sand 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.
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
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest 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 gouldii. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/varanus-gouldii
@misc{varanus_gouldii_2026,
title = {Varanus gouldii},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/varanus-gouldii}
}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.