Five Lined Skink

Five-lined Skinks are diurnal, so they are active during the day. They like to crawl out on rocks or logs to bask (soak up heat from the sun) during the day.

They are also always looking for a meal. Five-lined Skinks eat mostly insects, including: crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, and caterpillars. They also eat spiders, earthworms, snails, slugs, isopods, other lizards, and small mice. Five-lined Skinks will often climb dead trees where there are a lot of insects.

Five-lined Skinks mate in the Spring and females will dig a nest under a log, stump, or rock. She will lay up to a dozen eggs, which will hatch between June and August, depending on when they were laid. Females will stay with their eggs until they hatch. She will also eat any unhatched eggs.

Young Five-lined Skinks are about two inches long when born.

These lizards are found in moist woods where there are a lot of logs, stumps, and rock piles to go along with leaf litter.  This information was taken from www.fcps.edu .

At Cub Creek Science Camp we have Five Lined Skinks here in the forest.  Campers may find these beautiful Lizards on an Animal Safari during Science Camp.  The young Five Lined Skinks have lovely blue tails that will slowly fade in color as they mature.  All Five Lined Skinks have 5 light cream to white stripes that run vertically down their back.  The stripes may not be as visible on the adults as on the young.  Skinks are a family among the lizards which includes all lizard-like scaly reptiles.