Common five-lined skink

Young five-lined skinks are black with five cream stripes and a startling blue tail. The colour is a decoy: a predator that strikes at the bright tail can be left holding a wriggling tail tip while the skink escapes. Adults fade to brown, and breeding males develop orange-red heads.

Females lay their eggs in rotting wood or under logs and then do something unusual for a lizard: they stay. A brooding female coils around the clutch and defends it.

In parts of the southern United States, red-headed males are sometimes called “scorpions” and wrongly thought to be venomous. They are not. Some lookalike species, such as the broad-headed skink, make identification tricky.