Species group · Reptiles
Skinks
WAnimals has 3 species of skink, all in the family Scincidae.
- 3 species
- 1 family
- 18 countries
- 65 parks
- Weight
- 300 g – 600 g
- Length
- 8 cm – 60 cm
- Lifespan
- 6 – 20 years
Ranges calculated from the entries that record the figure, not from all 3.
All 3 species of skinks on WAnimals
Each one has its own full entry. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.
Conservation status
No species documented in this group is genuinely at risk according to the IUCN, with the data available today.
See the global conservation statusWhere they live
Recorded in 18 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:
Where to see them
Did you know…
Its smooth, overlapping scales reduce friction so effectively that it can move through loose sand almost as if swimming, an adaptation shared by several desert skinks.
From Orange-tailed Skink
In some parts of the Near East it has traditionally been used in folk medicine, a practice that has led to animals being collected for sale in markets.
From Orange-tailed Skink
It is notably long-lived for its size: there are captive individuals that have passed twenty years.
From Orange-tailed Skink
Threatened, it opens its mouth and shows a deep blue tongue as a warning display to put an attacker off.
From Common Bluetongue
Its blue tongue is a warning signal: it flashes it out while gaping its pink mouth, and experiments have shown that the blue also reflects ultraviolet light, most strongly at the back of the tongue, which is the part it shows in the last instant before an attack.
From Common Bluetongue
It is live-bearing: it gives birth to as many as twenty fully formed, independent young, which disperse within a few hours with no parental care at all.
From Common Bluetongue
Its ancestors crossed the Atlantic: genetic analyses indicate that the species descends from African skinks that reached the island on rafts of vegetation carried by the currents, a voyage of more than three thousand kilometres.
From Noronha Skink
It is extraordinarily tame and abundant on Fernando de Noronha, to the point of approaching visitors and restaurant tables, behaviour typical of island wildlife with no land predators.
From Noronha Skink