Pretty in Gray: The Berber Skink

I had never thought much about the color gray. I considered it a drab color, a color that I had come to associate with a few of the species that were not then very high on my herp “Iwannasee” list. But then I met a skink and I realized that beauty truly was in the eyes of the beholder, for not only was that skink gray, it was pretty. In fact, I thought it, with its orange highlights and smaller accents of fawn, to be one of the prettiest skinks I had until then encountered. And today, 50 years later, I still think this to be so.

Back in the 1960s when I first met this lizard, it was called the Algerian skink, Eumeces algeriensis. Today it is called the Berber skink (now the name “Algerian skink” is usually associated with the smaller Schneider’s skink, Novoeumeces schneideri) and like the Schneiders’ skink, the generic name is Novoeumeces. Small numbers of Berber skinks were imported between 1970 and 2000 but for the most part they have not been available and were but fond memories to those who had been lucky enough to actually see them in those earlier years.

I was lucky enough to have a few Berber skinks offered to me about 8 years ago. These heavy-bodied, foot long, omnivorous beauties are easy to maintain but have proven almost impossible to breed. They are known to be oviparous and like many skinks seem to be quite long-lived. Successfully breeding this terrestrial North African skink certainly remains a goal.

More photos under the jump...

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.