Common Sun Skink

Description:

Scincidae; Eutropis multifasciata (Kuhl, 1820). For a number of years, I have been trying, with little success to get some pictures of this skink. I have found it to be difficult to photograph because it is very shy, nervous and extremely fast. All of my previous attempts have resulted in poor quality pictures or sometimes even no pictures. It seems to be able to dash off into the undergrowth quicker than I can push the button on my camera. However, this morning I was lucky. My wife was inspecting her plants in the garden and spotted this Common Sun Skink. I was able to take several pictures, partly because I was as careful as possible not to alarm it, but what really helped was the fact that it was torpid. As we all know, reptiles thermoregulate by basking in sunlight to warm up and going into shade to cool down. Last night, we had prolonged heavy rain and this morning it was overcast. So the animal was in a spot where it obviously knew it would get some sunshine at some point in the day. In addition to its state of torpor, it appears to be a gravid female. It probably couldn't make a rapid escape even it wanted to. If it were not in the relative safety of our garden, I imagine that the combination of being gravid and in a state of torpor is probably a dangerous time for reptiles. There is a detailed description of this species in Wikipedia.

Habitat:

This beautiful skink was spotted in our front garden resting on the edge of a big concrete plant pot.