A trait apparent in many species of skink is digging and burrowing. Many spend their time underground where they are mostly safe from predators, sometimes even digging out tunnels for easy navigation. They also use their tongues to sniff the air and track their prey. When they encounter their prey, they chase it down until they corner it or manage to land a bite and then swallow it whole. Despite being voracious hunters at times, all species pose no threat to humans and will generally avoid interaction in the wild. Being neither poisonous nor venomous, their bites are also mild and minor.
Diet Skinks are generally
carnivorous and in particular
insectivorous. Typical prey include
flies,
crickets,
grasshoppers,
beetles, and
caterpillars. Various species also eat
earthworms,
millipedes,
centipedes,
snails,
slugs,
isopods (
woodlice etc), moths, small lizards (including
geckos), and small
rodents. Some species, particularly those favored as home pets, are
omnivorous and have more varied diets and can be maintained on a regimen of roughly 60% vegetables/leaves/fruit and 40% meat (insects and rodents). Species of the genus
Tristiidon are mainly frugivorous, but occasionally eat moss and insects.
Breeding '' mating Although most species of skinks are
oviparous, laying eggs in clutches, some 45% of skink species are
viviparous in one sense or another. Many species are
ovoviviparous, the young (skinklets) developing
lecithotrophically in eggs that hatch inside the mother's
reproductive tract, and emerging as live births. In some genera, however, such as
Tiliqua and
Corucia, the young developing in the reproductive tract derive their nourishment from a mammal-like
placenta attached to the female – unambiguous examples of viviparous
matrotrophy. Furthermore, an example recently described in
Trachylepis ivensi is the most extreme to date: a purely reptilian placenta directly comparable in structure and function, to a
eutherian placenta. Clearly, such vivipary repeatedly has developed independently in the evolutionary history of the Scincidae and the different examples are not ancestral to the others. In particular, placental development of whatever degree in lizards is
phylogenetically analogous, rather than
homologous, to functionally similar processes in mammals. ==Habitat==