Sticks and Scales

International Skink Society

   

Mabuya heathi

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                        Prasinohaema virens

 

There are 126 genera of skinks, give or take a couple.  And around 1300 species are described and that number continues to grow as new discoveries are made.  Of all the species of lizards in the world, over one third of those are skinks.  Coming in at a close second is geckos with around 1220 species.  But while the gecko has its own society, the Global Gecko Association (www.gekkota.com), the skink has nothing.  How can this be?  How could such a numerous common animal have escaped the obsession of human curiousity?  Because they are fast and live underground.  Geckos are slow and hang around at night.  They also are fantastically shaped with various knobs and protrusions.  95% of skinks have the same cylindrical smooth shape.  But there are some skinks that stand out so much that they warrant taking a deeper look at the entire family. 

Take Mabuya heathi, for example.  A plain looking skink from the forests of Brazil that ovulates tiny eggs that are nourished in the uterus via an epitheliochorial placenta, practically the same as mammals.  (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/98516108/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0)  In a lizard.  Whose reptilian relatives mostly lay eggs.  Why?  Why skinks?  Or what about the green-blooded skink, Prasinohaema virens?  It walks around with bileverdin levels in its tissues that would be deadly toxic to any other vertebrate.  Why was it able to survive such a catastrophic genetic mutation?  Or what about the Egernia group, who live in nuclear families that are stable for years?  (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12675829)  Why did that variation occur in skinks and not in other groups?  These are questions that demand a second look at the Scincidae. 

I propose that a social organization be created for scincid enthusiasts.  I propose that it be called the International Skink Society.  It would be open for anyone interested in skinks.  The ISS would be focused on creating an arena for scincid enthusiasts to come together to discuss research and ideas for conservation, responsible care in captivity, evolution, ecology, and more.  There would be an online site with resources, links, and bulletin boards.  A resource like this would be vital for work in conservation of threatened and endangered species, such as Plestiodon (Eumeces) laticeps, Oligosoma grande, and Eulamprus leuraensis. 

Australian Tree Skink, pleased to meet you

 

This is Whit, one of five Australian Tree Skink (Egernia striolata) in my collection.  He lives with his siblings in a hundred gallon tank.  The Egernia group of lizards is super unique in that they have been documented to live in nuclear families, that is, the offspring will stay with the parents as they grow up.  This kind of research is opening new insight into the behavior of reptiles.

The Person Inside the Lizard

 

In an attempt to fully understand my skinks, I have decided to undertake a project of photographing them face-on, like a person's face.  I want to capture their spirits.  It is not easy to do.  I want to capture their essence that is communal with ours, that a person can look at it and feel empathy with the skink.  This is Jack, a Schneider's skink from North Africa.  I just got him at the Tucson Reptile Show a few weeks ago.  He is very confident.  He has a wife, Mabel, who lives with him.

Boy Frog

Yesterday morning I went outside to check on the progress of my watermelon.  One watermelon plant, with my hand-pollinating help, actually made a watermelon.  I look at it about every other day.  I am so afraid to actually harvest it for fear that it won't be ready, so I just look at it every other day and wonder if it is ready.

As I was walking over to see it yesterday I noticed movement in the jacuzzi.  I assumed it was a native toad, either a red-spotted toad, a  Couch's spadefoot toad, or a  Sonoran Desert toad.  I was quite surprised to discover that it was an American bullfrog!  The reason I was so surprised is that bullfrogs require a constant source of water (unlike the toads) and I cannot think of any close-by water sources.  However, Tuesday night we had the biggest deluge of water since Erik and I have lived on Tucson's East Side.  The planter by our front door looked like a pond.  So it is possible that in all that watery flood the bullfrog just traveled a long distance and ended up in our jacuzzi! 

Since bullfrogs are a threat to our native species, I tried to offer it as a free pet on Craigslist.  People do not realize how damaging bullfrogs are to the Sonoran desert.  Some lady flagged me because she thought I was catching wildlife and making them pets.   So we ended up making it a pet for Noah.  He named it Boy Frog.

My garden guest

A tree lizard (Urosaurus ornatus) visits us almost every day.  I'm so happy to have this guy hanging out in my yard.  He visits the compost pile in the afternoons.  Smart guy since the compost attracts myriad insects and arachnids.  As I approached him today to take the picture he gave me some warning push-ups.  He sat still for a minute, to let me admire his handsome physique and bark-colored scales, then he scurried up and over the fence.  I hope he makes lots of babies because some green grasshoppers are decimating my collards!  Then again, the plants probably never would have gotten that big, due to the heat and my slack in watering!

Lazy and clumsy

These are two qualities that I hope people would never describe me as.  But I realized today, that even a hard office worker would be considered lazy and clumsy in a culture that values working with one's hands.  I visited the Solomon Islands in 2002 and in their culture, an American might have a hard time getting by-- no spear-fishing skills, no coconut tree climbing skills, no washing clothes by hand skills, no traditional foods cooking skills, etc.  My value was mostly in my money.  I couldn't speak their language, but they could speak mine.  I couldn't help much, and even when I learned how to crack a ngali nut or open and scrape a coconut, they could always do it ten times faster.  But I had goods and money.  My services were few-- I could sing some church songs, lead a bible study, a little baking.  But my first aid kit, my toiletries, my clothes, my electronics, and my money were highly sought after.  I was given high honors for my status.  Got to sit with the esteemed guests at a wedding.  But I was still seen as practically useless when it came to survival skills.  Even my skin burned and was sensitive in the heat.

I realized that my favorite animal, the lizard, is also seen as lazy.  They perform no function for humans, no work harnessed on their shoulders.  Some are farmed for their skins and meats, but very few, relative to the mammals.  I think contemplative is a better word than lazy.  Of course, even that is too anthropomorphic from science's point of view.  The reason they sit around so much is that they are masters at energy conservation.  But I think it might just be because they are meditative.  They are survivors, and they do it by not doing anything unless it is absolutely neccessary.  Perhaps we could take a cue from our dry, scaly relatives.  Observe and appreciate our surroundings and focus on our basic needs.

My prehensile-tailed skink has an abcess on one of her labial scales. I'm taking a wait-and-see approach.  I like to think that her body is healthy enough to fight these kinds of things on its own.  As you can see her eyes are still bright and her other scales seem healthy.  In this picture you can see her throat is a little puffed.  She really hates me right now.  For a while, before Micah was born, we had a good thing going.  I'd get her out in the evenings and place her on the shelf over the TV.  She'd hang out there until bedtime.  Now when I approach her cage she gives me the stinkeye and lunges at the glass sometimes.  What a sweetheart!!!

Fresh starts

I cleaned up the cages yesterday.  It feels so good to do that, like everythings is fresh and new in their microcosms.  The main objective was to take my asparagus fern out of its pot and separate it into three smaller pots, with one of the pots going into the cage of the Australian tree skinks (Egernia striolata.)  Unfortunately, my poor asparagus fern had already started to yellow its leaves a bit, from stressing over the transition from nursery pampering to Tucson patio neglect.  I am hoping that it is a hardy specimen that will bounce back.  They seem like survivor plants. 

The tree skink habitat looks inviting to me now.  It is still not identical to their native habitat of dry sclerophyll forest, but that is a challenge, since Eucalyptus typically is not grown in a terrerium or as a house plant.  I have a china doll plant (Radermachera sinica) and a Cotyledon sp. in there as well.  The R. sinica is hanging on swimmingly, as it should, since they are apparently considered weeds in their native tropical Asia.  The Cotyledon is dropping its leaves, not sure if it's from lack of water or UV light.  None-the-less, it's amazing how live plants just brighten up a terrerium home. 

Showing off

So my cousin, Denise, and her two daughters, Jordana and Audrey, came to stay with us this week.  Jordana is nine and Audrey is six.  Audrey was endlessly curious about the reptiles.  Every time there was a spare moment she asked if she could "carry" a reptile, or maybe could she please "carry" two?  I took it as an opportunity to model some of the handleable reptiles.  Since my blog is about kids and reptiles, I figured these would be good pictures.  Sidenote, I am reverting back to thumbnails, as they make it easier to scroll the page.

Here is the Schneider's skink.  Original name, Micah, then changed several times and finally reverted back to Micah.  Not sure if it's a girl or a boy, but I refer to it as a she.  Probably the most friendly of all my bunch.  I got this one from a friend who had two, and one died, so she gave me this one.  I've had this skink the longest of all my skinks.  I got it in 2001 from my friend, and she bought it from PetCo, probably around 1999.  So, my best guess for the age of this skink is at least 10-years old.  She goes dormant in the winter.  She is from N. Africa.

This is one of Erik's gang, an Arizona mountain king snake.  She was definitely sexed.  I don't know as much about Erik's reptiles as I do about my own.  I named this one Little Red.  Just cuz she was small and red.  There used to be a Little Black too.  I should have named them Hearts and Spades.  Anyway, Little Black was given to someone as a gift.  One interesting thing about these snakes is that in the wild they eat lizards.  So in order to get them to eat mice, which is easier and cheaper to come by than lizards, Erik found dead lizards (courtesy of our cat, Rama, who enjoyed a brief stint with outdoor freedom last year) and put them in a resealable baggie with dead pinkie mice.  When the pinkie mice were thawed to feed the snake, they retained the scent of yummy lizard, and the snake ate them.  Then she was weaned off of the scented pinkies.

This is also Erik's.  By the way, did I mention that I have only skinks and Erik has only snakes of the Southwest?  This one is a grey-banded kingsnake from Sanderson, Texas.  The people we bought her (definitely sexed) from at the Tucson Reptile Show found the parents there and bred them, producing this offspring.  I named her Sandy.  She is very handle-able.  When you open her drawer, she comes crawling out to you.  These are also lizard-eaters, but convert fairly easy to mice.  I think most kingsnakes prefer lizards.  Aren't they pretty snakes?

This is my "Solomon Island Ground Skink."  That's what she (not sexed) was sold as.  Eugongylus albofasciolatus is her official name.  I bought her at a pet store for $100 and saw them for sale at last year's reptile show for $75.  I wonder if she came from an import from the Solomon Islands?  They are also found in Papua New Guinea and Northern Australia.

This is the rosy boa, or as Audrey put it, the "rosy mama."  She was given to us from a co-worker of Erik's who knew he liked snakes.  She and a male rosy boa were found in California and lived with their owner here in Tucson for many years.  Her name is Rose.  She is super friendly, as you would expect from a rosy.  If a kid wants to hold one of our reptiles, she's usually the first I let them hold.  They learn not to squeeze, and to hold with open palms.  Rosy boas probably cost about $120-$150 in the stores and come in an array of colors.  This color is a sage-scrub/foothills type color.  Darker to hide in and among the grey shrubs and rocks.  Rosies that come from desert mountains will be sandier and lighter cream colored.  What a wonderful snake!