The green keel-bellied lizard is a slim, bright green lizard with a long prehensile tail that accounts for about 70% of its body length. The emerald-green scales on its back are small, smooth and non-overlapping. The scales on its underside are yellow-green and keeled (Have a prominent ridge down the midline). They are native to areas in the coastal plain of Kenya and Tanzania where they are arboreal in nature (live up in the trees). There sometimes have patches of turquoise around its limbs, and occasionally black speckled lines along the sides of its body and black speckles on its tail. Its tongue is bright red. It can grow up to a length of 40cm, with average individuals measuring 25-35cm. They are mainly insectivorous but will eat some fruit or fruit based lizard diets (like repashy, blue river diets and ours show a preference for watermelon pangea).

They make an excellent display species, think green tree monitor but in miniature and this is what you get. They like having plenty of hollow cork tubes in their enclosure which they will use as resting and sleeping areas. They are however normally out on display and quite an active species. If handled when young they can become very tame, if they are not handled much though they can be a bit flighty as adults so perhaps not the best choice for a novice keeper unless you are content with a species that won’t want much hands on interaction. If feeling threatened, they can stand up on their back legs with fore limbs by their side and will open their mouth wide with tongue extended while they do a defensive posture that looks like they are doing some form of war dance. A very peculiar and fascinating behaviour but one that is not often seen as they tend to be relatively placid by nature.

Like virtually all the animals we sell, these were bred right here in store.