Fire Skink

Overview

The fire skink is a West African forest lizard with some of the most striking coloring of any commonly kept reptile: brilliant red flanks broken by black and silver barring, a gold and bronze back, and a black-and-white banded throat. It spends most of its life underground or under leaf litter, which is the part new keepers underestimate. A fire skink in a shallow setup will look permanently stressed and hide in a corner; the same animal in deep, moist substrate will burrow, tunnel and then come out to bask and hunt in the open. They are secretive rather than shy, and most become confident enough to feed from tongs, though taking food from tongs is not the same as tolerating a hand: even settled animals stay quick and squirmy when held.

Quick Facts

History

Edward Burton described the fire skink in 1836 as Tiliqua fernandi, from a specimen taken on Fernando Po, the island off West Africa now called Bioko. It then spent nearly two centuries being shuffled between genera: Lygosoma, then Lepidothyris under Cope in 1892, then Riopa under Loveridge in 1936, then Mochlus under Mittleman in 1952, which is why old care sheets and new ones rarely agree on the name. A 2009 review led by Philipp Wagner went further and split what keepers had treated as one animal into three species, restricting the true fire skink to tropical West Africa and the western edge of Central Africa. Most animals in the trade are still wild collected and shipped out through Ghana and Togo.