The blue-tailed skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) is a common North American lizard. Its vibrant blue tail, especially in younger individuals, along with its quick movements and glossy appearance, often captures attention.
Physical Characteristics
The blue-tailed skink is a small to medium-sized lizard, typically reaching a total length of about 4.9 to 8.5 inches (12.5 to 21.5 cm), including its tail. Juveniles exhibit a dark brown to black body adorned with five prominent white or yellowish stripes running lengthwise. Their most notable feature is a bright blue tail, which gradually fades to a lighter blue, gray, or brownish hue as the skink matures.
Adult males often show a uniform brownish or olive coloration with faint stripes, and their heads may develop an orange or reddish tint during the breeding season. Adult females tend to retain their stripes more distinctly and their tails may become blue-gray. The skink’s scales are smooth and shiny, giving it a sleek appearance, and its body is slender with relatively short legs.
Natural Habitat and Range
Blue-tailed skinks are primarily found across the eastern United States, extending north into southern Ontario, Michigan, and eastern New York. Their range reaches west to Minnesota, Missouri, and eastern Kansas, and south through Florida, Mississippi, and Texas. They are abundant in the coastal plain of the southeastern United States.
They prefer moist, wooded areas with ample cover, including woodlands, forests, oak savannas, and suburban areas. They seek refuge and foraging opportunities under natural elements like logs, stumps, rocks, leaf litter, and bark piles, as well as human-made structures such as fences or abandoned buildings.
Distinctive Behaviors and Diet
A prominent behavior of the blue-tailed skink is tail autotomy, its ability to voluntarily detach its tail as a defense mechanism when threatened. The detached tail continues to wiggle, creating a distraction that allows the skink to escape from predators such as birds, snakes, and small mammals. While the tail will regenerate, the new tail is often shorter and less colorful than the original.
Blue-tailed skinks are diurnal. They are shy and elusive, often seen basking on sun-warmed surfaces like rocks or walls. Their diet consists of various insects and other small invertebrates, including crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, spiders, insect larvae, and worms.