Reptilia · Squamata
Zootoca viviparaLichtenstein, 1823
Viviparous Lizard
Photograph by Arthur Gelling, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating lizard from the Palearctic region, reaching 77 mm snout to vent.
Also called European common lizard.
Once published as Lacerta vivipara — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Lacertidae › Zootoca
- Grows to
- 77.3mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 12years
Longer than 71% 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
47 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
- 2018
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 12years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 32.1–33.6°C90–92 °F
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 30.5°C87 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 26.7–34.3°C80–94 °F
Castanet 1994, Jesus 2012: 5, Bauwens and Diaz-Uriarte 1997: 32 months, Yakin and Tok 2015: 4 (Nature), Petzold 2008: 5 (nature) but 12 (captivity), Hallmann and Griebeler 2015 (11), "The average life span of Z. vivipara is 2.8 years (Strijbosch & Creemers, 1988) with a maximum recorded of 11 and 7 years for females and males, respectively (Massot et al., 2011).", (Breedveld et al. 2017), up to 12 (McInerny and Minting 2016), Avery 1975: "Less than 10 % of the population of subadults in September will reach a total age of more than 12 years", max 8 in nature (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 77.3mm3 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 62.4mm2.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 61mm2.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 18.53mm0.7 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 18.5mm0.7 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 10.69g0.38 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 4.22g0.15 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.21g0.01 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
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Shrubland, Wetlands
- Biome
- Boreal Forests/Taiga
- Active season · months of the year
- 2.5–7months
- Region
- Palearctic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 3000m
- Range size
- 17,593,852km²
- Density
- 1.5–1000per hectare
- Home range · largest recorded
- 1692.1m2
invertebrates (Corti and Cascio 2002, Dunayev and Orlova 2023), "It feeds on spiders, beetles, ants, cicadas, caterpillars, and butterflies." (Szczerbak 2003), arthropods (Avery 1966), insectivore (Gvozdik 2002), "a wide range of invertebrates including insects, spiders, slugs, worms and snails" (McInerny and Minting 2016, who give refernces)
e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016
e.g., Gvozdik 2002, Herczeg et al. 2003
(e.g., Mesquita et al. 2016), sometimes climbs
max 2400 (Hallmann and Griebeler 2015), max 2500 (Speybroeck et al. 2016, Dunayev and Orlova 2023), 0-3000 (Gvozdik 2002), max 2900 (Strachinis et al. 2019, Buehler et al. 2021), 0-2577 (Roitberg et al. 2020)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Mixed
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 6.7eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–16eggs
- Mean clutch
- 3.6–9.8eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
- First breeds at
- 11–36months
- Age at first breeding · female
- 730days
both: some populations Viviparous, others Oviparous
1-13 (Maso and Pijoan 2011), 2-16, means 4.3-9.8 (Roitberg et al. 2013), 2-12, mean 6 (Stojanov et al. 2011), mean 7.74 (Mesquita et al. 2016), 8-12 (Szczerbak 2003), 5.67 (Hallmann and Griebeler 2015), "clutch size... ranges from two to nine eggs (4.65 ± 0.3; mean ± SE; Horv athov a et al., 2013)." (Breedveld et al. 2017), 3-10 (Gvozdik 2002), Recknagel and Elmer 2019 (mean: oviparous, 6.73, viviparous, 5.81, 2-13 from Figure 3a), "2 – 14 (6.1 ± 0.14) with mean values 3.6–8.6 embryos or youngs per 1 female in different populations... he average fecundity in Tomsk population was 5.6 – 7.1 (6.3 ± 0.21; n = 106) in different years" (Orlova et al. 2005), 4-10 (Hraoui-Bloquet 1987), 3-11, usually 7-8 (McInerny and Minting 2016), mean 5.5 (Barnagaud et al. 2020), mean 7.74 (Avery 1975), 2-12 (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Laterata
- Subspecies
- Zootoca vivipara louislantzi ARRIBAS 2009 Zootoca vivipara pannonica (LAC & KLUCH 1968) Zootoca vivipara vivipara (LICHTENSTEIN 1823)
- Described by
- Lichtenstein
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1823
- Type locality
- Austria
Keeping one
12 in × 12 in × 7.5 in(31 × 31 × 19 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 3 in (77.3 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 90–92 °F (32.1–33.6 °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 11 g, the heaviest recorded for Viviparous 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.
- Skin colourpeer reviewed
- Genetic basis and expression of ventral colour in polymorphic common lizards. — Mol Ecol 2024
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 · a typical adult
- — 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
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — 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). Zootoca vivipara. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/zootoca-vivipara
@misc{zootoca_vivipara_2026,
title = {Zootoca vivipara},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/zootoca-vivipara}
}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.