Sep 13, 2009

Skink vs cockroach

Last Sunday started as a nice lazy morning, but I soon found myself instigating an epic conflict between a bunch of rainbow skinks and a near dead cockroach. Rainbow skinks are little lizards about 5-10cm long that normally eat tiny bugs in the garden. However, this morning the skinks found themselves going after a pretty nasty looking cockroach that I flipped on its back and left on a rock. It was much larger prey than they were used to, but one made a valiant effort and eventually dragged the roach away. I later caught one of his brethren (which was tough - they're fast little buggers).









I'm slowly working my way towards Steve Irwin levels of animal annoyance.

4 comments:

  1. I hope the tail didn't fall off... it's their last line of defence.

    PS love the nickel for scale

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  2. No, I didn't know that they shared that trait with geckos. So many bizarre lizards down here though. I almost ran over a 3 foot long water dragon on my bike yesterday. I was going by the pond at UQ and slammed on the brakes to look at these big eels I noticed in the water, and immediately after I did this big lizard goes running out of the sunny walkway, right where I would've ridden. We were both lucky.

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  3. "The dead skink I had found for use in my electron microscope pictures had apparently died from collapsed chest cavity pressure...cause unknown."

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