skink mimicking a snake

In the recent articles we talked about tactics from the snakes, spiders, birds and others for survival, and for saving their offspring.  In the picture below, you can see a skink (kind of lizards) mimicking the pose and the features of a snake, when it saw that I found him. It not only gave that pose, but put forth its forked tongue, like a snake! Unfortunately I couldn’t take the photo with its forked tongue, but believe me, the skink looked exactly like a snake then! You can see the red tail of the skink hidden in bushes. These skinks have another survival tactics. They shed its tail to distract its predators. The tail keeps wiggling on the ground, while the skink escapes!

skink mimicking a snake

This is one of the early-photographs, taken on our old olympus camera. The skink in the picture is the Dussumier’s Forest Skink, Sphenomorphus dussumieri, quite common in our place of the Western Ghats in India. Why the name Dussumier? Dussumier was a French voyager who used to collect zoological species from the Indian subcontinent, during the early 1800s, and the name of this skink is attributed to him.

Date: 18 Sept 2005
Location: @ home, Kottayam, Kerala, India
Camera: Olympus C770UZ + MCON-40 Macro Lens

25 Responses

  1. Zeenath says:

    Hi I live in sri Lanka and I have two small kids below the age of two. We have a backyard and I always see these types of skinks. Today found one on my baby’s mattress. Was frightened because some said its poisonous and can cause death when bitten. Is it true?? Is there any way I can get rid of them.

  2. saba says:

    hello,your’s article is very much helpful for me,i am from india,(distt:-gurdaspur) punjab ,and in my city these are looking very common here and there,in streets,gardens,fields every where,is it harmful for humans?they look very dangerous

  3. asma says:

    We photographed many skinks in our garden. My sister caught a few too. Your blog is really nice.

    • rocksea says:

      Hey asma, happy to hear that you coould see and photograph a lot of skinks in your garden. Hope you freed the skinks you caught! Wishes for a happy new year 🙂

  4. captain dave says:

    came upon a nest of Northern Coal skinks feeding on a earthworm twice there size .kept three as pets and feeding them meel worms any tips.

  5. saeed says:

    hi i am saeed , today as i was cleaning an old shed i hapened to come across 3 skinks , out of which the large male escaped by shedding its tail and one i caught to keep as a pet, the adult forked tounge looked dark blue and it looked like a snake when it lifted its head its a magnificient creature hv to send it back to their habitat when i spot all the thre again

  6. Happy Kitten says:

    The “Arana” looks just like a snake.. nd they say ‘arana kadichal udane maranam”.. is it true that they r poisonous?

    • rocksea says:

      Hey happy kitten, I have also heard such warnings when I was young. It is but a superstition. Skinks (aranas) are not poisonous, and are harmless.

      I had mentioned that the skinks sometimes shed its tail to distract predators. In some skinks, these tails could contain small amount of toxins which could be harmful to small pets like cats.

  7. I love that photograph! The only animals I can photograph here in Belgium are… cows, chickens, … :p

    • rocksea says:

      Hey Laura, thanks for the comment. Are you living in a city? I am currently living in a city and we don’t see any of these – even cows or chickens!! Most of these are photographs taken from my hometown, which is out of the city sprawls.

      I guess Belgium is blessed with a lot of natural habitats. May be out of the city…

  8. rocksea says:

    cheers elaine and anoop!

  9. Anoop Negi says:

    cool report on the skink !

  10. Elaine- says:

    how odd!! the wonders of nature!!

  11. jaya says:

    what exactly is a skink? is it arana? sorry, too lazy to google it:)

  12. Fascinating reading about the skink.

  13. Andy says:

    Wow I have never heard of this lizard/snake. Very cool information! Great shot too.

  14. Mridula says:

    And if I would have seen it I surely would have thought it was a snake!

  15. Anwin says:

    I know this skink. It is very common in Kochi where I used to spend my summer holidays back when I was a kid.

    I used to find them in Nagercoil too, where I am actually from.

    That’s when I learned that the strange looking lizard was actually called a skink.

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