Inscrutable Angels: an Outing to Sri Lanka’s Skinkdom

Einstein – or perhaps it was Sun Tzu – argued that 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 marvellous even that 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, prefect 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 as 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 to 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 version of Rudolph Vanentino: sleek, elegant, nimble, and stylish. They can be seen in trees, rocks, grassland, buildings, jungle, scrub, 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 the proclivity scientists have for reclassifying anything that ever once moved. Many claim that there are 34 skinks here; others far less. 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.Certainly, some skinks do their uttermost best to present a rather grungy face to the world, eager to extend and protect their social isolation. The Toeless Snake Skink is a great 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, ensures that is forever overlooked. Taylor's Lanka Skink is no better. Tiny – 43 mm in length and little more – endemic and commonplace in such areas as Sinharaja, the Knuckles, Gampola, and Hantana, it is dull bronze with the merest hint of a 5 o’clock shadow down the length of its body. It was named in for an obscure Missouri zoologist, Edward Taylor, an honour it shares with nine other reptiles, eleven reptile sub species, 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 right accords Sri Lanka and the Indian sub-continent - even into Vietnam, proves that being common is no deterrent to being quite simply stunning. With its carrot-coloured trail and golden bronze body it looks as if it has strolled out from the showrooms of Cartier, or Bulgari. Certainly, any celebrity empathic enough to adopt one as a pet would have ...