Cape Skink

Fascinating facts about the Cape Skink

• A quick glance at a garden in Cape Town might reveal three pale lines racing down a lizard’s back – those are the signature stripes of the Cape skink, a surprisingly stout reptile whose olive-brown skin is peppered with dark spots. Its limbs are short. This bold pattern makes it the most recognizable lizard in South Africa’s suburbs.
• While most people think of lizards as egg-layers, the Cape skink gives birth to live young, usually around a dozen per litter.
• In the wild, the Cape skink hides in tiny tunnels at the base of boulders or trees, using any cover it can find as a temporary shelter. When humans are around, the same skink can become so trusting that it will eat straight from a hand, often gaining extra weight in the process. Its adaptability shows how quickly a wild reptile can shift to a semi-domestic lifestyle.
• Predators such as the fiscal shrike and a variety of snakes hunt the Cape skink, but the rise of domestic cats in suburban areas has turned neighborhoods into hunting grounds, wiping out local skink populations in many spots.
• From the Cape of Good Hope to the plains of Botswana, Namibia, and Zambia, the Cape skink spans most of South Africa and even shows up in isolated pockets in Zimbabwe.

At a glance

About the Cape Skink

The Cape skink, Trachylepis capensis, is a robust, often stout lizard distinguished by three light stripes that streak down an olive-brown to gray back, punctuated by myriad dark spots on the flanks. Its elongated body ends in short limbs, and a pale, grey-white belly peeks from beneath the patterned skin. In the wild this coloration blends with the scrub and leaf litter of southern Africa, while the occasional paler stripe hints at individual variation. Across South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and isolated pockets in Zimbabwe, the Cape skink thrives in suburban gardens as well as natural bushland. It is a live-bearing species, delivering litters of roughly a dozen neonates that scuttle into the world from a modest tunnel dug at the base of a boulder or tree. Though shy in its native habitat, the skink becomes remarkably tame around humans, even accepting food from a hand, a trait that has turned it into a popular pet, albeit one prone to obesity in captivity. Its most surprising ally is the fiscal shrike, which, alongside snakes, helps regulate skink numbers in the wild.

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