Complete Guide To Skink Lizards

Skink Lizard Notes

• The different species of skink lizards found in North Carolina have slightly different habits, but again, not so different as to help a casual observer identify them as one species and not another.
  • Coal Skink Lizards live mostly out of sight, under leaf litter, logs, and rocks.
  • Five-Lined Skinks prefer moist, humid areas and often bask out in the open on rocks and elevated perches.
  • Southeastern Five-Lined Skinks prefer disturbed areas in the coastal plain and prefer to stick close to the ground.
  • Broad-Headed Skinks prefer drier habitats than the Five-Lined Skink but is just as arboreal, if not more so, and climb high trees.

On The Menu – Skink Lizard Diets

• Skink Lizards prey on small arthropods, like:
  • Insects and their larvae, including:
    • Crickets
    • Grasshoppers
    • Beetles
  • Earthworms
  • Spiders
• Broad-Headed Skinks are apparently tough enough to attack the nests of Paper Wasps (Polistes spp.) for the wasps’ pupae.
  • Although the adult wasps aggressively defend their nests en masse by stinging aggressors (as wasps are wont to do), their stingers apparently can’t penetrate Broad-Headed Skinks’ tough, scaled skin (Behler and King 2020).
  • IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!
    • Despite the fact that we humans are orders of magnitude more massive than both wasps and Broad-Headed Skink Lizards, wasps are extremely dangerous to us. They can and will cause us tremendous pain through their retaliatory gang attacks. Some humans actually die from wasp attacks.
    • So, regardless of how unperturbed Broad-Headed Skink Lizards may be in the face of wasp attacks, always remember that discretion is always the better part of valor for humans when encountering any wild animal, but especially wasps and bees.
      • Always stay far, far away from wasps whenever possible and never, ever harass them.

What Eats Skink Lizards

• Many animals eat skink lizards, especially:
  • Birds like:
    • Red-Shouldered Hawks (Buteo lineatus)
    • Red-Tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis)
    • American Kestrels (Falco sparverius).
  • Large orb weaver spiders like:
    • Yellow Garden Orb Weaver Spiders (Argiope aurantia)
    • Golden Silk Orb Weaver Spiders (Trichonephila clavipes)
      • These spiders only prey on Green Anole Lizards when the lizards accidentally become tangled in their webs; the spiders never actively hunt prey.
      • But these spiders are definitely large enough—and have venom strong enough—to make excellent meals out of Green Anole Lizards.
  • Snakes like:
    • Ringneck Snakes (Diadophis punctatus)
    • Corn Snakes (Elaphe guttata)
    • Pine Wood Snakes (Rhadinaea flavilata)
    • Black Racer Snakes (Coluber constrictor)
    • Kingsnakes in genus Lampropeltis, like:
      • Mole and Prairie Kingsnakes (L. calligaster)
      • Scarlet Kingsnakes (L. triangulum)
      • Eastern Kingsnake (L. getula getula) (Gibbons and Dorcas 2005).

A Tailless Defense: Tail Autotomy in Skink Lizards

• Five-Lined Skink Lizards watch, listen, and smell for predators.
• They are extremely skittish lizards and quick to dart to safety under rocks or leaf litter when they sense danger.
• But if, despite their best efforts, escape is impossible and predators attack, Skink Lizards have a special defense mechanism called “tail autotomy”.
• Tail autotomy (also called “caudal autotomy) means that these reptiles can break off the ends of their long, fragile tails to escape predators without hurting themselves.
• When a predator grabs a Skink Lizard’s tail, special breakage planes within the lizard’s tail snap and separates the tail end from the lizard’s body.

• Reflexive muscle action causes the tail end to twitch for several moments after separation, which hopefully distracts the attacker and gives the lizard time to escape.
  • Skink lizard tail ends twitch and flop around more energetically and for longer than those of their Green Anole Lizard cousins.
• Tail separation doesn’t hurt the lizards and Skink Lizards can regrow their tails, given enough time.
  • Regrown tails lack vertebrae and natural fracture planes and instead are composed of tough, fibrous tissue that surrounds a cartilaginous tube in place of the spinal column (Fitch 2003, https://doi.org/10.1670/0022-1511(2003)037[0395:ACSOLA]2.0.CO;2).
  • Unfortunately, tailless individuals are especially vulnerable to predators during the regrowth process because they’ve already lost one of their defenses.
  • Regrown tails never reach the same length as the originals, which can also hinder the lizards’ balance and how they are perceived by members of the opposite sex.
  • Losing and regrowing a tail also uses a lot of energy and nutrients that the lizards must obtain and replace.
• For these reasons, Skink Lizards only drop their tails during desperate situations as a last-ditch survival strategy.

Skink Lizard Mating and Reproduction

• Skink lizards aren’t very territorial, especially compared to their lizard cousins, Green Anole Lizards, but during breeding season, males will fight each other for females.
  • Skinks can inflict serious injuries on each other, thanks to their sharp teeth and claws.
  • Injuries sustained during dominance fights make individual lizards vulnerable to predators or dangerous infections.
• Females lay several eggs in clutches.
  • Larger females lay more eggs per clutch than smaller females (Martof et al. 1980).
• Female skink lizards guard their eggs and monitor their moisture levels.
  • If the mothers sense the eggs are drying out, they will urinate on the eggs to increase humidity in nests.

Special Note For Cat Owners

Domestic cats that are allowed to roam in the wild sometimes capture skink lizards. If the cats actually eat the lizards (as opposed to just batting them around, as cats do), they may “lose their sense of balance or develop a paralysis requiring veterinary attention.” (Behler and King 2020).