Habitat and Distribution

In the wild this species is confined to the Knuckles Mountain Range, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, located in central Sri Lanka. This montane cloud forest ecosystem is characterized by high humidity, cool temperatures, and dense vegetation, which provide an ideal environment for this lizard. It is arboreal and often found on moss-covered branches and trunks of trees.

Behavior and Ecology

Being diurnal, they spend the daytime hours foraging for small invertebrates such as insects and spiders. It’s slow movements and excellent camouflage allow it to avoid predators. The species is ovoviviparous, meaning it gives birth to live young rather than laying eggs, a trait that is relatively rare among lizards.

Conservation Status

This species is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List due to its extremely limited range, habitat loss, and the degradation of its montane forest habitat caused by human activities such as agriculture, deforestation, and climate change.

Conservation Efforts

Efforts to conserve Cophotis dumbara include habitat protection within the Knuckles Conservation Forest, raising public awareness, enforcing strict regulations to prevent illegal collection and captive breeding programs.

Captive Care

These lizards make great captives as they have very few requirements which are easily met with minimal effort and cost.

Enclosure

Being small lizards they do not require large cages. We use front opening, screen top cages that measure 30″ x 12″ x18″ for our adult pairs. These are readily available at big box stores under the brank Zoo Med or Exo Terra.

Temperature

They like temperatures that range from the upper 60’s into the low 70’s – so no external heat is needed in most cases.

Lighting

They do require good UVB lighting which can easily be provided with any of today’s readily available bulbs designed for that purpose. We use T5 5.0 UVB bulbs to provide this need.

Feeding

These lizards are strictly insectivores. We fed our dumbara 3 times a week with either crickets or roaches (dubia or red runners). We dust the prey with Rapashy Calcium Plus at every feeding.

Breeding

Being ovoviviparous these lizards give birth to live babies. Maturity happens in adult females at about the age of one. They can probably safely produce offspring before that age but we like to wait until the