skink

I was going to do another week of birds, but a coworker requested lizards. And yanno, there's some fun lizard names too, such as:


skink (SKINK) - n., any of numerous lizards (family Scincidae) with short legs, long body and tail, and smooth scales.


There are about 1500 of them worldwide. Almost all of them are burrowers, and also almost all are insectivorous. The name comes, via Middle French and before that Latin, from Greek skínkos and/or its variant skíngos, which named some unknown kind of lizard common in Asia and North Africa, origin unknown.

Seen locally, a western skink (Plestiodon skiltonianus):


Thanks, WikiMedia!

---L.