This terrestrial species ranges through a wide variety of habitat types. It is found in arid areas, grasslands, savanna, shrublands, in cultivated areas and close to human settlements. In northwestern Africa it exists along the coast and in the Argan forests. In West Africa, it is found in all habitats except for deserts and dense forest (Trape and Mané 2006). It is ovoviviparous with a single litter of 20 to 60 young (which varies by geographical area) and a mean of 20-40; there is, however, a record of a female giving birth to 156 young (Spawls and Branch 1995).

This species ranges throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa from Senegal to Ethiopia, Eritrea (and perhaps Djibouti, but no records are available - Ineich 2001) and Somalia, south to South Africa (Broadley 1990, Spawls and Branch 1995, Trape and Mané 2006, Largen and Spawls 2010), and disjunctly in much of the southwestern Arabian Peninsula. In northwestern Africa it has a relictual distribution and is known only from an isolated subpopulation in southwestern Morocco and northwestern Western Sahara. In is widespread in sub-Saharan West Africa, occurring continuously from southern Mauritania and Senegal to western Benin, but with fewer, scattered records from Nigeria, and with a northern range limit in western Mauritania, central Mali and central Niger (Trape and Mané 2006). Within Central Africa, it is widely distributed in savannah habitats, including patches of savanna within tropical lowland forest. It occurs almost throughout East Africa (Spawls et al. 2018). In the Afrotropical Belt of the Arabian Peninsula, populations are found in the western mountains below 22 degrees north through the Yemen highlands to Dhofar (Egan 2007). It can be found from near sea-level up to 3,500 m asl (J. Penner pers. comm. 2012).

It is present in many protected areas throughout its range. No direct conservation measures are needed. Further studies into the taxonomy of this species are suggested.