One day late in my stay in Tanay I took a rare excursion off the trail and went looking for wildlife in one of the deepest, wildest areas, down near the stream where vegetation was relatively thick and the debris of the forest settled around the ground.

Hunting in that area I came across one of the neatest reptiles I’ve ever seen – the Spiny Waterside Skink!

The Spiny Waterside Skink is part of a unique group of lizards called “stream skinks” which like to spend time in water as well as land. But the Spiny Waterside Skink is doubly unique due to the hard spiky scales that line its body as a defense against predators.

I let the lizard go and continued searching the forest, and just a few minutes later came across a second one. Look at those spikes! If you were a small animal searching for a lizard meal you wouldn’t want to mess with those. 🙂