It lives in a wide variety of habitats, including deserts and semiarid shrubland, usually in areas with sparse vegetation; it also may be found in woodland, open dry forest, and riparian growth.

Since it does not migrate, a number of forms have developed in different regions, several of which have been given subspecific names – for example the California whiptail, Aspidoscelis tigris munda.

[2] Nota bene: A trinomial authority in parentheses indicates that the subspecies was originally described in a genus other than Aspidoscelis.

The subspecific names, dickersonae, stejnegeri, and vandenburghi, are in honor of American herpetologists Mary Cynthia Dickerson, Leonhard Stejneger, and John Van Denburgh, respectively.

In the US it can be found in the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah.

[8][9][10] In the northern parts of its range, the western whiptail usually emerges from hibernation in May, and most adults aestivate during the midsummer months, but in the south it is active from April through late August.

Daily periods of activity are of similar duration from north to south, although the time of emergence tends to be later in northern areas.

[9][11][12] The western whiptail mostly eats insects, spiders, scorpions, lepidopterans, crickets, grasshoppers, and beetles.