Sri Lanka’s Skinks | Inscrutable Angels

Sri Lanka’s skinks have a degree of subtleness that propels that immaterial attribute into the outer galaxy - fallen angels, perfect for being not what they seem. But how can you ever tell them apart?

Einstein – or perhaps it was Sun Tzu – argued that the subtle is as subtle does.  If they are correct, then the very existence of this podcast threatens the salient virtue of Sri Lanka’s most elusive animals with a terrible undoing.  But it’s a risk worth taking.

Big, bold, and marvellous though so much of what is immediately encountered in Sri Lanka, more wonderful even than all you might ever encounter here, is everything that at first sight looks most ordinary.

Running alongside its elephants (the biggest in Aisa); its literature (Booker-winning); its literary (stratospheric); its politicians (megaphone-loving); its recorded history (2,500 years and counting); its leopards (larger than most); its spices (flawless), is a rare penchant for subtlety, the one virtue that – of course - dare not speak its name.

Such reticence is remarkable. Alarming, pleasing, it is also, as the Apostle Paul might have said, something that "passeth all understanding, an innate national delicacy wrenched from centuries of struggle, sympathy, fatalism, and plenty.

Wherever you look, you are likely to find a trove of detectably undetectable meanings which, however good or grim, are always so engrossing as to ensure that you need never run the risk of living a life so unexamined as to be barely worth living at all.

And so it is with skinks. They are the most model of model metaphors for the country; symbols for a nuanced elusiveness that is much more inspiring than anything instantly evident. So small as to be ignored; so little studied as to be mysterious; so numerous as to be everywhere, they live a life somewhere between heaven and hell, like semi-fallen angels, perfect for always being not what they seem. If that is, they are ever noticed at all. For Sri Lanka’s skinks have a degree of subtleness that propels that immaterial attribute into the outer galaxy.

Like the Mermaid in far-off Zennor, the island’s skinks live in plain sight, far beneath the radar. Never has there been a more perfect creature to win lasting acclaim as the country’s national animal than this, though the awarding of such an honour would, of course, destroy the very reason why skinks should be chosen to win it at all.

Despite owning 1700 different species around the world, skinks are almost as obscure as sea potatoes. More snake-like than lizards, but with legs that no snake owns, with the face of tiny dragons, the agility of squirrels, and the impish intelligence of chameleons, they live all around us, minuscule glittering versions of Rudolph Vanentino: sleek, elegant, nimble, and stylish. They can be seen in trees, rocks, grassland, buildings, jungles, scrub, and on the coast. The very antithesis of McDonald’s and every other soulless global brand, of the 31 skinks that call Sri Lanka home, a colossal 85% are to be seen nowhere else but here.

But a word of warning – for the claim that the island is home to 31 different skink species is to court controversy. Modern science has done its level best to make skink counting almost impossible, given scientists' proclivity for reclassifying anything that ever once moved. Many claim there are 34 skinks here; others, far fewer. It all depends on which monograph or piece of field research can be said to have preceded all others. To make skink appreciation still more impenetrable, scientists have given these petite beasts the most wearisome of Latin names. It is as if some gargantuan global conspiracy born in the Ark itself has plotted to keep skinks out of sight and out of mind. This modest study of island skinks, elaborated here, seeks to repair some of the damage.

Indeed, some skinks do their utmost best to present a rather grungy face to the world, eager to extend and protect their social isolation. The Toeless Snake Skink is an excellent example of this. Despite being well distributed across Sri Lanka, especially in the high forested parts of Kandy, its rather drab black-bronze countenance and complete absence of legs ensure that it is forever overlooked. Taylor's Lanka Skink is no better. Tiny – 43 mm in length and a little more – is endemic and commonplace in areas such as Sinharaja, the Knuckles, Gampola, and Hantana; it is dull bronze with the merest hint of a 5 o’clock shadow down its length. It was named after an obscure Missouri zoologist, Edward Taylor, an honour it shares with nine other reptiles, eleven reptile subspecies, eight amphibians, and a milk snake once rumoured to suck cow’s udders.

Other island skinks, though, are more evidently in the catwalk category. The Common Dotted Garden Skink, happily widespread across Sri Lanka and the Indian subcontinent - even into Vietnam - proves that being common is no deterrent to being quite simply stunning. With its carrot-coloured tail and golden bronze body, it looks as if it has strolled out from the showrooms of Cartier or Bulgari. Indeed, any celebrity empathic enough to adopt one as a pet would have little compunction in not also taking it as a Plus-One to one of the better launch parties to which they are invited. Its striking appearance makes it relatively easy to spot, as does its uncommon size – varying from a tiny 34mm to a titanic 148mm.

Beddome's Skink is another knockout. One of the nicer, albeit unintended, consequences of Richard Beddome setting off for Madras in 1848 to join the East India Company was his discovery of many new species. He was to give his name to a bat, three lizards, a gecko, two skinks, five snakes, a toad, four frogs, five plants, two slugs and a blind worm before retiring to Wandsworth over forty years after he had first made his dreamy adolescent way out east. His collections can still be seen in museums in London, Calcutta and Scotland, the legacy of an admirable naturalist hiding under the cover of an army officer. One of his skinks, Beddome's Skink, is still most easily found right across India and Sri Lanka, a modest 55mm in size and joyfully untroubled by the excesses of the modern world. It has four legs, each with four toes. With the Breton stripe French naval uniform, popularised by Coco Chanel as its distinctive markings, it is well placed at the high-fashion end of skinkdom.

And here it can keep company with Dussumier's Litter Skink. Named for a 19th-century French zoologist, better known for his work on herrings, Jean-Jacques Dussumier’s skink, sometimes called the Litter Skink, is found not just in Sri Lanka but across southern India too, where it lives in most forest habitats below 500 metres. Somewhat solitary and unapologetically territorial, it is a thriving beast of no genuine conservation concern. About 50mm in length, it has the most fashionable appearance. A tapering dark black stipe edges the sides of its body, which is otherwise a speckled bronze, and its tails fade from this into a brilliant tangerine.

Another proven pin-up is Haly's Tree Skink. First discovered in Sri Lanka back in 1887 by an intrepid zoological double act, Haly & Nevill, Haly's Tree Skink later became embroiled in impassioned taxological arguments sparked by sightings of what was thought to be endemic to the island but later found in various parts of India. For decades, the argument went back and forth: it was endemic. No, it wasn’t. Currently, the consensus seems to be that it is – the Sri Lankan variant being sufficiently different to its Indian cousin as to be considered a separate species. But the debate, rather like a grumpy politician in opposition, is bound to explode again, fed by thirsty new findings. Bearing four feet and four toes on each limb, at a colossal 80mm, it hovers on the brink of conservation misery, falling into the Near Threatened category. But it bears such striking horizontal dark brown stripes across its golden bronze back as to have won itself a place on one of Sri Lanka’s stamps – and for just 125 rupees, you can post the beast anywhere across the island.

The Seashore Skink has yet to appear on a stamp, though it richly deserves one. Although mostly a sun-and-surf skink, living a reasonably unthreatened life along Sri Lanka’s coasts and dunes, it has managed to find its way inland too – even into hills of 500 meters. Living as much in India as in Sri Lanka, it is not an endemic skink, but it nevertheless has lovely black-and-yellow markings on its sleek bronze body and four fine little feet, each with four toes. It is at the smaller end of skink sizes, being little more than 50mm, and was named in honour of a Frenchman, Gabriel Bibron, whose fondness for reptiles led him to also attach his name to three poisonous snakes, a blind snake, three lizards, a turtle, and two geckos.

Three particular skinks are notable for their eccentricity. Though smallish in size (around 52mm), the endemic Tammanna Skink has something of a reputation for cannibalism, eating young pretenders without much thought. Preferring low country, it is widespread throughout Sri Lanka and sits at the tame end of skink colouration, with dull bronze tones and darker speckled sides. Its name – Tammanna – means desire or wish in Sanskrit, though what this beast wants, apart from being left alone, is something science is still struggling with.

At the other end of the table manners spectrum is Burton's Nessia, sometimes called the Three-Toed Snake Skink. Quite why Edward Burton, an obscure 18th-century army surgeon and Kentish magistrate who is never known to have left England, should be given the honour of lending part of his name to this endemic skink is a mystery. Cheerfully categorised as merely “Near Threatened,” the best but one Conservation Category, it is found right across the wet zones of Sri Lanka, wherever there is soft decaying organic matter: leaves, logs, forest. Its standard reproductive limit is two eggs per year. Some 60mm long, it is primarily black-grey in colour, with a stocky, snake-like body sporting four diminutive legs, each with three toes. It has the unusual dining habit of vomiting out its food if caught – presumably to put off its trapper.

The last of the oddball trio, the Ceylon Tree Skink is a mountaineer among island skinks, being the only one ever found at altitudes above 7,500 feet. Horton Plains, Hakgala, and Nuwara Eliya are amongst its preferred backdrops. Endangered, almost to the point of being critically endangered, it is about 58 mm long, with stocky feet and four modest toes. Endemic, stout and rather miserly in the egg-laying department, it is a modest looker, bronze-brown all over with little else to distinguish it.

Although most skinks are sizeistically challenged, a handful stand out for bucking the trend: a nose-to-snout length of around 50 mm. Seven skinks exceed this measure with grace. The Speckled Forest Skink is around 70 mm and has a small list of alternative names, including Bronze Mabuya and Bronze Grass Skink. Shy but abundant across south and southeast Asia, including Sri Lanka, this otherwise unremarkable beast is remarkable for its dazzling bronze body – so metal-like, in fact, that it looks as if it had just wandered out of a forge. In all other respects, it lives a conventional life, a real bread-and-butter skink that gets on with living in the most drama-free ways, its focus most definitely on egg-laying, producing up to 6 eggs a year – quite a feat within the skink world. It is as territorial as a latter-day Russian tsar, with a marked preference for forested or grassy habitats at elevations of 1000 meters or more.

Similarly sized is the Sri Lankan Bronze Skink. Barely anywhere in Sri Lanka, the highest of the highlands expected, is off limits to the endemic skink. Its fecund egg-laying habit (it lays about half a dozen eggs a year) helps ensure it can more than weather whatever is thrown at it. Golden bronze with a dark side stripe along its length, it was named for a Hungarian twitcher, Gyula Madarász, whose single visit to Sri Lanka in 1895 netted him 125 stuffed specimens to take home to Budapest. Later rumours that he married his daughter turned out to be wrong.

A little larger - at 78mm – is the Sri Lanka Supple Skink. Despite being accepted into the annals of Skinkdom by research scientists back in 1950, so little is known about this endemic skink that it could easily find work in deep cover espionage. It has four tiny legs and four rather stumpy toes and has been little seen outside the low-lying scrub of the northeast coasts of the island. Compared to this, Sarasins' Snake Skink is very large (up to 92mm) despite being almost entirely legless (its so-called back legs are mere buds). It is a bronze-coloured endemic skink found across most of the drier parts of Sri Lanka. It is named in honour of two Swiss zoologists whose only known journey beyond their mountain home was to an island in Indonesia, by-passing Sri Lanka altogether. Larger still – at 80 mm - is the Two-Toed Nessia, an endangered endemic skink fond of forests of 500 to 1200 meters, though it has also been spotted in coconut plantations. It is light brown in colour, and its tiny legs each sport two toes.

None, however, comes close to the Many-Kneed Grass Skink, also known as the Golden Skink or the Keeled Indian Mabuya.  Back in 2020, as the rest of the world began to settle down into the purdah of the COVID pandemic, something far more game-changing interrupted the plaid chat rooms of Sri Lanka’s skinks. Die-hard nationalists wrote out the Many-Kelled Grass Skink as non-endemic, as they kept popping up in India as often as Sri  Lanka. However, on closer study – notably of its ear-hole size, chin shields, and snout disparities – researchers concluded it was sufficiently different to be declared a new endemic species. Eutropis carinata one day, but Eutropis lankae the next. Subtly decorated in stripes of yellow, black, brown, and bronze, it is, at around 121mm, a titan amongst skinks and often to be seen sunbathing. Its earlier conservation status for Eutropis carinata was "Least Concern," but now, with its new global recognition, all bets are off, and a few dedicated scientists are conducting field studies to determine its new status. Given how super productive it is in the egg-laying department (it lays up to 20 eggs a year) and its willingness to live almost anywhere below 1000 meters, it is highly likely to be widespread across the island.

But beating them all is the Eyed Skink. This beast lives in the warmer parts of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Indian sub-continent – and, remarkably for so jet-setting a reptile, in Sri Lanka too, it now seems. A research monograph published in the January 2008 edition of the Russian Journal of Herpetology excitedly revealed that its range, hitherto outside the island, could now confidently be said to include Sri Lanka as well. And not just here and there - for the beast was spotted in surveys right across the lowland forest areas of the island from north to south. Its proclivity to eat practically anything may help account for its enormous size (about a foot in length) and its untroubled life, earning it the Conservation status of least concern.

Despite many skinks being robust enough to thrive amid the challenges of the modern world, many also face an existential threat, with the future of their particular DNA hanging in the balance. The Four-Toed Snake Skink is one such example. Some 60 mm in length (largeish in skink terms), this endemic beast really does look like a golden-brown snake with tiny legs, each sporting four miniature toes. Despite laying up to 2 eggs a year, it is critically endangered, with its range restricted to hills in the Knuckles region at elevations of 700 meters or more above sea level. As far as the IUCN Red List is concerned, there are only two worst outcomes: extinction in the wild and total extinction.

Deignan's Tree Skink is another critically endangered endemic skink. It can best be found (if found at all) on trees across Sri Lanka’s higher hills – anything above around 2,000 feet. Dark olive bronze with a modest stripe, it has four well-developed feet, each with four matching toes and was named, somewhat randomly, in honour of an American birdwatcher from Thailand. Equally critically endangered is Layard's Snake Skink. Legless and endemic, little is known about this rare skink that inhabits the Central Province and the wetter parts of the country’s coastline. Even its tiny size is mildly disputed. It is named after Edgar Layard, an amateur zoologist who worked in the Ceylon Customs office in the mid-19th century and whose natural history collections, when sent back to England, weighed 9 tons.

Smith's Snake Skink is known from very few sightings in hillier parts of the central province and around the Knuckles Mountains, an endemic skink so obscure that the IUCN Red List has little option but to leave its conservation status blank. However, it lays up to 4 eggs a year. A reddish bronze, its hind feet are mere buds, and its forelegs are absent.

Deraniyagala's Snake Skink is known to science from a single specimen collected on a hillock by the beach north of Trincomalee. This endemic skink is about as rare as ever rare gets: so rare in fact that the IUCN Red List doesn’t even try to attempt to give it a conservation status at all. Bronze coloured and wholly limbless, almost nothing but its size (62mm) is known about it. It is named after the great Sri Lankan zoologist Paul Deraniyagala, whose 1955 discovery of Balangoda Man - perfectly preserved Mesolithic skeleton remains – gave the country a picture of its first fully recorded human.

So little is known about the Shark-Headed Snake Skink that the IUCN refrains from assessing its conservation status. It is endemic to the dry lands in the northwest of the island, including Wilpattu. It lacks limbs but has a head that is somewhat similar to a benign shark's. Its 60mm long body is reddish to dark bronze in colour. No less data-deficient is Flower's Skink, also known as Taylor's Striped Mabuya and Taylor's Skink. It was named for Major Stanley Smyth Flower, a Victorian army officer and zoologist who made it his business to study most areas of wildlife from Egypt to Siam and was regarded by Rudyard Kipling as "one of the most interesting men I have ever met". The skink that bears his name comes from around Trincomalee and is endemic to Sri Lanka. But despite its taxonomy being more or less nailed down in 1950, so little is still known about it that scientists cannot tell quite how rare it is or if their estimate of around 50mm for body size is really accurate. A burnished bronze all over with a long dark streak along its side, it is holding out its many secrets in plain sight, and in a world ever more shorn of real mysteries, this is perhaps a comfort of sorts.

Several skinks have burnt across Skinkdom like firecrackers, their discovery proving that extinction may have a silver lining. A ground-breaking study of skinks published in 2007 revealed that hiding under the skink taxonomy of Sphenomorphus was not just a new genus (Lankascincus), but also three other skinks hiding in plain sight within this new genus. One of these was the golden red-bronze Greer's Lanka Skink. At barely 42 mm, it was documented as living in Sri Lanka’s south-western lowland and is both rare and endemic. Having waited quite so long for global recognition, it now awaits new field research to see if its real distribution is so challenged as to be the sort of skink Andy Warhol had in mind when he spoke of “Fifteen minutes of fame.”

For Sri Lanka’s skinks, 2007 was not unlike 1492 for Christopher Columbus and the discovery of the Americas. Many new skink species were unveiled that year, including the endemic Adam's Peak Lanka Skink. Bronze in colour with a dark brown streak along its 58mm body, it has four legs, each with four tiny toes. As such a recherché arriviste on the island’s skink scene, scientists are busy trying to find out more about it, though it is probable that it is unlikely to be found beyond the slopes of the sacred mountain on which it currently dwells.

And in the same year, Munindradasa's Lanka Skink was discovered. It is the long-sorrowful fate of most of Sri Lanka’s skinks to be named after some bearded and remote 19th-century scientist who never visited Sri Lanka. But in this regard, Munindradasa's Lanka Skink has fared better. It is named in honour of Dr Amith Munindradasa, a Sri Lankan engineer with a side interest in nanotechnology and a determination to turn carbon into diamonds. One of Munindradasa’s most endearing habits was to adopt lesser-loved wild creatures - scorpions, centipedes, bats, and snakes. So skinks, with their troubled reputation, somewhere between a chameleon and a snake, would most naturally have fallen into his caring orbit. Not seen outside Adam's Peak, this endemic skink is an exceptionally rare, albeit tiny (40mm) and visually unexceptional, with dull bronze skin, four feet and four matching toes.

Ten years later, two more skinks hit the headlines. Sameera's Lanka Skink exploded across the quiet corners of the skink world when a monograph, “A New Species Of Lankascincus Greer, 1991 (Reptilia: Scincidae) With An Overview Of The L. Gansi Group," was published. Sameera’s retiring little beast had been identified during a national lizard survey conducted by the Wildlife Heritage Trust, which spotted it nestling in fallen leaves in Matara’s Morningside Rakwana Hills. It was named in honour of Dr Sameera Karunarathna, an intrepid discoverer of several new gecko and lizard species. A burnished bronze with flecks of grey and yellow, scientists have so far got little further than describing its minuscule 35 mm size and confirming its endemic status. It remains firmly at the mysterious end of skink scrutiny. And discovered in the same year was Gans's Three-Toed Snake Skink, often encountered in the lower, damper parts of Sri Lanka. An endemic skink, it is blessed with four legs, each of which sports three toes. For many years, it suffered from acute Dissociative Identity Disorder, being confused with Nessia burtonii, which also has three toes – the confusion was only finally sorted out by scientists in 2017. But then, rather like a library book left on the wrong shelf, it was wrongly mixed up with Lankascincus gansi, which turned out to be an identical skink that has been allocated to an entirely separate genus, so calling into question how many different skinks really do inhabit the island.

Chaos and taxological turmoil also enveloped the Catenated Lanka Skink - one of those unfortunate skinks that has been moved from genus to genus until eventually arriving with, one hopes, some degree of closure, if not giddiness, at the Lankascincus genus. An endemic skink, it rarely exceeds 58.5 mm. Despite laying little more than one egg a year, the beast enjoys the “Least Concern” category in the Red List of Threatened Species. It largely stays within its preferred habitat: the forests and wetlands of southwestern Sri Lanka. Troubled too was the Common Supple Skink. Also known as Peter’s Tree Skink, this diminutive skink (it is little more than 40mm) is one of several skinks to have suffered from multiple identity syndrome, having been allocated to one scientific family, and then another. Once thought to be critically endangered by the IUCN Red List assessment, it has since had its status revised and, as its name implies, is considered widespread, if somewhat elusive, across the island—reddish-bronze in colour, with four agreeably developed legs, each with four toes.

Next time you pass an elephant, or tuck into a fragrant pepper and cinnamon curry, look around you first. There will be skinks to see; Sri Lanka to comprehend - and the entire meaning of life to joyfully reassess.

That was a production written and recorded by David Swarbirck at The Ceylon Press, based in the jungle north of Kandy at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, and set up to tell the story of Sri Lanka.