Bedriaga's Skink

• Its limbs are so reduced that they are barely visible as it moves.
• It eats insects, spiders, slugs and woodlice.
• It lives on sandy ground with scattered vegetation and good cover in the Iberian Peninsula.
• It is an Iberian endemic: it lives nowhere else in the world.
• Its legs are much reduced, with tiny toes, because it moves by slithering through sand and leaf litter more than by walking. Its body is halfway between a lizard's and a snake's.
• That way of life, called sand swimming, is a convergence repeated among the skinks of loose soils all over the world.
• It is viviparous: the young are born fully formed, with no egg stage.
• It is very hard to see, and its distribution is fragmented into isolated populations, which — together with the loss of coastal sandy habitats — explains its Near Threatened category.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (reptile)

Habitat & environment

Sandy ground with scattered vegetation and good cover in the Iberian Peninsula, also in open woodland

Birth weight

Born live and independent (a viviparous species)

Size at birth

Born live and independent

Litter / clutch size

1 to 6 live young per litter (larger females produce more)

Sources consulted: Diputación de Málaga (Great Malaga Path); Wikipedia (Chalcides bedriagai); Animalia.bio; Grokipedia (Chalcides bedriagai); PMC (reproductive output Chalcides striatus comparative study)