Little Brown Skink: Movable See-Through Eyelids, Side-Striped Body

Summary: North American little brown skink habitats get movable see-through eyelids and sharp-toothed jaws on 4-legged, long-tailed, striped 20-toed bodies.

little brown skink (Scincella lateralis); Colonial National Historic Park (NHP), Hampton Roads region, southeastern Virginia; Sunday, April 5, 2015: Anne Devan-Song/NPS Northeast Coastal & Barrier Network, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

North American little brown skink habitats adjust to distribution ranges from New Jersey through the Florida Keys, eastern Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, southern Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, Delaware and everywhere in-between.

Little brown skinks bear their common name for body background color, diminutive sizes and Scincidae family membership with the world's burrowing, climbing and crawling scincid lizards. The scientific name Scincella lateralis contains firstly the genus categorization as a lizard and secondly the species characteristic of sides that configure the body's only stripes. Designations defer to descriptions in 1823 by Thomas Say (June 27, 1787-Oct. 10, 1834), chief geologist for Major Stephen Harriman Long (Dec. 30, 1784-Sep. 4, 1864).

Little brown skink life cycles expect well-aerated, well-drained soils for underground burrows and forested grasslands, hardwood hammocks and humid forests for invertebrate prey and leaf litter.

January through August fit little brown skinks within broad-headed, coal, five-lined, four-lined, Gilbert's, ground, many-lined, mole, Plains, prairie, sand, southeastern and western skinks winter-through-summer mating seasons.

Little brown skinks go outside as North America's most arboreal skink since five-lined and southeastern five-lined skinks go for lower-trunk forages and sunbaths, not canopy sleepovers. They hasten after crawling and paused, low-flying and low-lying, ground-level, near-ground and underground, suburban and woodland invertebrate prey once their body temperatures head into optimum ranges. Defensive and offensive involvements initiate hissing, inundating predators and rivals with tail tips shattered along fracture lines and sticking out oval, thick tongues with shallow-notched tips.

Agro-industrialists, breeders, collectors, polluters and predatory armadillos, crows, foxes, hawks, kestrels, moles, opossums, raccoons, shrews, shrikes, skunks and snakes jeopardize North American little brown skink habitats.

Little brown skinks know brief courtships and internal fertilizations of calcium carbonate-shelled eggs that brooding females keep laying monthly April through August, to a five-clutch maximum.

Mothers-to-be never lace themselves around leafy nests since they leave immediately after laying each month's 1- to 7-egg clutch, whose incubation lasts 4 to 5 weeks. Their little adult-like hatchlings migrate without maternal management through juvenile stages, with body lengths and weights one-half of adult equivalents, into physically and sexually mature stages. Crawling and low-, slow-flying, day-active, ground- to near-ground-level, opportunistic ants, beetles, centipedes, cockroaches, crickets, flies, gnats, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, moths, slugs, snails, spiders and termites nourish adults.

North American little brown skink habitats offer season's coldest temperatures, north to southward, from minus 5 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20.55 to 1.66 degrees Celsius).

Barrier islands, bushes, cypress heads, debris-strewn lots, hammocks, leaf litter, live oaks, old woodpecker holes, palmettos, rocks, snags, standing dead trees and swamps protect broad-headed skinks.

Two inches (5.08 centimeters) and 3 to 5.125 inches (7.62 to 13.02 centimeters) queue up as mature little brown skink snout-vent (excrementary opening) and total lengths. Adults reveal brown heads with dark eyes, mobile tongues and sharp-toothed strong jaws and brown bodies with black-striped sides, four five-toed small legs and long tails. They see despite above- and below-ground particle streams through transparent windows in the lower of two movable eyelids and sometimes sever and swallow their regrowable tails.

Dark-eyed, sharp-toothed, strong-jawed brown heads with movable, see-through eyelids on four-legged, light- side-striped, 20-toed brown bodies with long regrowable tails North American little brown skink habitats.

range map for little brown skink (Scincella lateralis): rbrausse; IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

little brown skink (Scincella lateralis); Colonial National Historic Park (NHP), Hampton Roads region, southeastern Virginia; Sunday, April 5, 2015: Anne Devan-Song/NPS Northeast Coastal & Barrier Network, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/npsncbn/37028907774/

range map for little brown skink (Scincella lateralis); Dec. 6, 2012: rbrausse; IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scincella_lateralis_distribution.png

For further information:

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 7, Reptiles, edited by Michael Hutchins, James B. Murphy, and Neil Schlager. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2003.

Holbrook, John Edwards. 1836. "Scincus lateralis -- Say. Plate VIII." North American Herpetology; Or, A Description of the Reptiles Inhabiting the United States. Vol. I: 71-73. Philadelphia PA: J. Dobson.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4075451

James, Edwin, comp. 1823. "S. lateralis. Say." Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819 and '20, by Order of the Hon. J.C. Calhoun, Sec'y of War: Under the Command of Major Stephen H. Long. From the Notes of Major Long, Mr. T. Say, and Other Gentlemen of the Exploring Part. Vol. II, Chapter XVII: 324-325. Philadelphia PA: H.C. Carey and I. Lea.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40217270

Uetz, Peter. "Scincella lateralis (Say, 1823)." Reptile Database.
Available @ http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Scincella&species=lateralis&search_param=%28%28search%3D%27Scincella+lateralis%27%29%29