Sigiriya Wildlife: What You Will Actually See

Toque Macaque Common Endangered

Macaca sinica

A small endemic monkey with a swirl of hair on the crown arranged like a cap, and the most studied primate on the island.

Where: The rock, the water gardens and the temple surrounds. Best: Year round. Never hand food to one. A fed troop becomes food conditioned and bites more.

Tufted Grey Langur Common Near Threatened

Semnopithecus priam

Long-limbed, silver-grey and black-faced, sitting in the open on a ruin or a track edge in every dry zone park.

Where: Tall trees around the rock and along the approach. Best: Year round.

Indian Peafowl Common

Pavo cristatus

Wild, and behaving like a wild bird: displaying on a termite mound at dawn with leopards in the same scrub.

Where: Open woodland and the tank margins at dawn. Best: Year round.

Sri Lanka Grey Hornbill Regular

Ocyceros gingalensis

A slim, quiet hornbill with no casque, common enough to see from a hotel garden and endemic all the same.

Where: Tall trees around the rock and in the surrounding forest. Best: Year round.

Brown Fish Owl Occasional

Ketupa zeylonensis

A big owl with bare unfeathered legs, because feathers are a liability when you fish with your feet.

Where: Large trees near the moat and the tanks, at dusk. Best: Year round.

Malabar Pied Hornbill Occasional Near Threatened

Anthracoceros coronatus

The island's big hornbill, sealing the female into a tree hollow behind a wall of mud for the whole nesting period.

Where: Fruiting trees in the surrounding dry forest. Best: Year round.

Bengal Monitor Common

Varanus bengalensis

A dry-country monitor that climbs well, digs constantly and eats essentially anything smaller than itself.

Where: Open scrub, ruins and the stonework of the ancient cities. Best: February to September.

Sri Lankan Common Skink Common

Eutropis lankae

The bronze skink basking on every wall, ruin and hotel lawn in the country turned out in 2020 to be an endemic species, not the Indian one everybody had been calling it.

Where: Stonework, walls and open ground throughout the ruins. Best: Year round.

Kandyan Day Gecko Regular Endangered

Cnemaspis kandiana

One of more than forty day geckos on this island, every single one of them found nowhere else, and they work rock faces in daylight instead of hunting at night.

Where: Rock faces, boulder gardens and the cave temple walls at Dambulla. Best: Year round, morning on shaded rock. Diurnal, unlike almost every other gecko, so you can actually watch it work the rock.

Painted-lip Lizard Regular

Calotes ceylonensis

A dry zone endemic with a red stripe painted along its upper lip, and when it is alarmed the stripe flashes white.

Where: Wooded ground around the rock and the moat, and the Dambulla temple surrounds. Best: Year round. One of the easiest endemic lizards to find on a standard cultural triangle itinerary. Watch the red lip stripe flash white when it is alarmed.

Indian Rock Python Occasional Near Threatened

Python molurus

Sri Lanka's largest snake, and in the dry season it lies out at the edge of a shrinking waterhole where every animal in the park has to come.

Where: Scrub and tank margins around Sigiriya and Kandalama. Best: Year round, cool mornings.

Indian Star Tortoise Occasional Vulnerable

Geochelone elegans

The most trafficked tortoise on earth, and the Sri Lankan animals are the biggest and the most boldly starred of the lot.

Where: Scrub and grassy verges around the base of the rock. Best: After rain.

Sri Lankan Flying Snake Rare

Chrysopelea taprobanica

A gliding snake of the dry zone that flattens its belly into a wing and launches itself off a temple wall.

Where: Old trees, temple walls and the rock itself. Best: Year round, daytime. It really does glide, flattening its belly into a channel and launching from height.

Antlion Common

Myrmeleon sp.

The larva digs a conical pit in dry sand and flicks grains at anything trying to climb out, collapsing the walls under it.

Where: Dry sheltered dust beneath the rock overhangs and along the stairways. Best: Year round.

Blue Tiger Common

Tirumala limniace

Migrates in drifting rivers of thousands, and roosts at night in trees hung solid with butterflies.

Where: Scrub and woodland edge around the rock and the tanks. Best: February to April.

Common Emigrant Common

Catopsilia pomona

The butterfly behind the name Samanala Kanda, Butterfly Mountain, and the mass movement that heads for it every year.

Where: Open scrub and tank margins. Best: Year round.

Common Rose Swallowtail Common

Pachliopta aristolochiae

A velvety black swallowtail with a crimson body and rose-pink spots, floating slowly to show it is poisonous.

Where: Gardens and scrub around the rock and the tanks. Best: Year round.

Crimson Rose Common Near Threatened

Pachliopta hector

Flies slowly and in the open because it is poisonous and every predator on the island knows it.

Where: Garden and scrub edges around the rock and the tanks. Best: Year round.

Giant Honey Bee Common

Apis dorsata

A big, fierce wild bee that hangs single-comb nests the size of a door from high branches and cliffs.

Where: Combs under the rock overhangs beside the stairway, marked by the wire mesh cages built as refuges. Best: Year round. The mesh cages on the stairway are the refuge if a colony erupts, and people have died here.

Signature Spider Common

Argiope anasuja

Writes a bold zigzag across the middle of its own web, and nobody is entirely sure why.

Where: Garden and scrub edges around the rock and the tanks. Best: Year round.

Giant Forest Scorpion Occasional

Heterometrus swammerdami

Among the largest scorpions on earth, and its sting is milder than a bee's.

Where: Under stones and logs in the scrub around the rock, at night. Best: Year round, night.

Sri Lankan Ornamental Tarantula Rare

Poecilotheria fasciata

The spider that gave the ornamental tarantulas their name, described in 1804 and found only here.

Where: Old trees and stonework around the rock and the surrounding forest, at night. Best: Year round, night.