What Is the Little Lizard With a Bright Blue Tail? Identifying the Five-Lined Skink

In late summer, a small, quick, glossy lizard starts turning up on decks, patios, woodpiles, and stone walls across the eastern United States — and the thing everyone notices first is the tail. It is an almost unreal electric blue, bright enough that people assume they are looking at some exotic or escaped pet. Almost always it is a native five-lined skink, and the blue-tailed individuals are the young ones. This is the season you see the most of them, because a fresh batch of hatchlings has just emerged, each one barely bigger than a paperclip with that signature blue tail.

How to Identify a Five-Lined Skink

The five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) is a smooth, shiny lizard that changes its look dramatically as it ages. The blue-tailed stage that surprises people is the juvenile:

• A slim body around 5 to 8 inches long including the tail, with smooth, glossy scales that look almost wet or polished
• Juveniles are jet black or very dark brown with five crisp cream-to-yellow stripes running head to tail
• A brilliant blue tail on juveniles that fades as the lizard matures — adults turn plain brown or bronze, and the stripes grow faint
• Breeding males often develop a bright orange-red jaw and head in spring and early summer
• Short legs and a fast, darting, slithery run — they vanish into leaf litter or a crack the instant they feel watched

If the stripes and blue tail seem to disappear on a bigger, browner lizard, you are not seeing a different species — you are likely seeing an older five-lined skink that has simply outgrown its juvenile colors.

Why Is the Tail Blue?

The blue tail is a survival trick. It is the most eye-catching part of the young skink, and that is the point: a predator tends to strike at the flashy, waving tail rather than the head or body. The tail can break off and keep wriggling on its own for a while, distracting the attacker while the skink escapes — and the lizard later regrows a (usually shorter, duller) replacement. As the skink matures and no longer relies on this bait-and-run defense, the blue fades away, which is why nearly every blue-tailed lizard you see is a juvenile.

Five-Lined Skink or Broad-Headed Skink?

A small black lizard with five pale stripes and a blue tail is almost always one of two species: the five-lined skink or the very similar broad-headed skink (Plestiodon laticeps). As juveniles they can look nearly identical. The classic way herpetologists tell them apart is by counting the small scales on the upper lip between the eye and the nostril — five-lined skinks typically have four, broad-headed skinks have five. For a casual observer that is hard to see, so the easier clues are size and setting: broad-headed skinks grow noticeably larger and more heavy-headed and spend more time up in trees, while five-lined skinks are the smaller, ground-and-woodpile lizard you meet most often. Either way, both are harmless, non-venomous, and beneficial — they eat insects and spiders.

Spotted a small striped lizard with a flash of blue and want to know exactly which skink is living in your woodpile? Snap a photo and let Spotter identify the reptile, so you can tell a five-lined skink from its look-alikes without having to catch it.