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Other common names for P. fasciatus include blue-tailed skink (for juveniles) and red-headed skink (for adults). It is technically appropriate to call it the American five-lined skink to distinguish it from the African skink Trachylepis quinquetaeniata (otherwise known as five-lined mabuya) or the eastern red-headed skink to distinguish it from its western relative Plestiodon skiltonianus ...
Together with the Great Plains skink it is the largest of the "Plestiodon skinks", growing from a total length of 15 cm (5.9 in) to nearly 33 cm (13 in). A male broad-headed skink, illustration from Holbrook's North American Herpetology, 1842. The broad-headed skink gets its name from the wide jaws, giving the head a triangular appearance.
The conspicuous coloring of species of Plestiodon is a survival trait: it attracts a predator's attention to the tail of the animal, which will break off when grabbed. A skink thus often manages to escape and hide under some rock, log, or fallen leaves while the predator still contemplates the wildly thrashing severed tail.
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It is a four-lined skink whose light stripes extend onto the tail. The broad dark lateral stripe is 4–4.5 scales wide and there are no light lines on top of the head. The dorsolateral light stripe is on the edges of the 3rd and 4th scale rows, counting from midline of back. One postmental scale is present.
Plestiodon elegans, elegant skink, five-striped blue-tailed skink (juvenile), or Shanghai skink (East Asia) Plestiodon fasciatus, common five-lined skink; Plestiodon gilberti, Gilbert's skink (North America) Plestiodon inexpectatus, southeastern five-lined skink; Plestiodon kishinouyei, Kishinoue's giant skink; Plestiodon lagunensis, San Lucan ...
Blue-tailed skink may refer to: Cryptoblepharus egeriae, a lizard native to Australia's Christmas Island; Plestiodon elegans, the five-striped blue-tailed skink, a lizard found in East-Asia; Plestiodon fasciatus, the five-lined skink of North America; Trachylepis margaritifera, the rainbow mabuya of Africa
The middle stripe tends to be narrower than the others, and the dark areas between stripes are black in young skinks but become brown with age. A similar lizard, the common five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus), is slightly smaller than the southeastern five-lined skink and has broader stripes. However, it is difficult to discriminate between ...