Broadhead Skink

Yes. In North Louisiana, broadhead skinks get called "scorpions" by people who have decided that anything with a wide head and bright coloring near their porch deserves a shovel. During breeding season — roughly April through June in North Louisiana — the head turns bright orange to red-orange, a coloration driven by hormones that fades after the breeding season ends. Adults reach 6 to 13 inches in total length, though most individuals in North Louisiana fall in the 7-to-10-inch range.

Adult male broadhead skinks are olive to brown with wide, muscular jaws that give the head a distinctly triangular profile. During breeding season — roughly April through June in North Louisiana — the head turns bright orange to red-orange, a coloration driven by hormones that fades after the breeding season ends. Outside of breeding, males are still identifiable by head width, body size, and the faded traces of the orange coloring. Females and juveniles look completely different from adult males. Females have five light stripes running the length of the body from head to tail on a dark brown to black background — identical to the pattern on five-lined skinks. Juveniles have the same five-lined pattern plus a vivid bright blue tail that gradually fades as the animal grows. A juvenile broadhead skink and a juvenile five-lined skink are so similar that even experienced herpetologists sometimes cannot tell them apart without checking scale counts.

What They Eat

Broadheads eat insects, spiders, snails, and occasionally small vertebrates — including other lizards. The wide, powerful jaws are functional: they can crush beetle exoskeletons, snail shells, and the hard bodies of large arthropods that smaller skinks cannot handle. Broadheads have been documented eating green anoles, and cannibalism of juvenile broadhead skinks by adult males is reported in the scientific literature. A 12-inch male broadhead skink has the jaw power and the inclination to eat smaller lizards, and they do.

Feeding is diurnal and involves both active foraging on the ground and canopy-level hunting in trees. Broadheads locate prey visually and by tongue-flicking — the flicking tongue picks up chemical cues that help the skink find hidden prey under bark, in leaf litter, and in tree crevices. They often consume large prey items in sheltered locations to avoid being preyed upon themselves during the handling time — a strategy called "central-place foraging" that reduces exposure to predators while eating.

Reproduction

Males establish territories in spring and defend them aggressively. Territorial disputes between male broadheads involve lateral compression (turning sideways to look as large as possible), head-bobbing, and physical combat. Fights result in injuries — bitten tails, scratched heads, lost grip falls from trees. Guarding a mate carries real costs, and males frequently suffer damage during the breeding season.

Females prefer larger males with brighter orange heads. Male head size and coloration function as honest signals of fitness — a big orange head means a well-fed, genetically robust male that has survived territorial combat long enough to grow that large. Females follow pheromone trails that guide males to them; a gland on the female's underside near the tail secretes chemicals during breeding season that males detect through tongue-flicking.

Females lay 8 to 22 eggs in rotting log cavities, creating a nest by packing down debris inside the cavity. Unlike five-lined skinks, which also guard their eggs, broadhead females select elevated nest sites more often — a cavity in a standing dead tree rather than a log on the ground. The female guards and broods the eggs until hatching in June or July, staying with the clutch, turning the eggs, and defending against small predators.

Hatchlings are 2.5 to 3 inches long, dark-bodied with five light stripes and a brilliant blue tail. The blue tail is hypothesized to function as a predator deflection device — a predator that strikes at the bright tail gets a detached, wriggling tail while the skink escapes headfirst. Tail autotomy is expensive (lost fat reserves, reduced speed, decreased reproductive success) but better than being dead.

The Venomous Myth

No lizard native to North Louisiana is venomous. Broadhead skinks are not venomous. Five-lined skinks are not venomous. Green anoles, brown anoles, prairie lizards — none of them are venomous. The only venomous lizards in North America are the Gila monster and the Mexican beaded lizard, neither of which occurs within a thousand miles of Louisiana. A broadhead skink can bite — and a large male can deliver a surprisingly strong pinch — but the bite involves mechanical force, not venom.

The "scorpion" label that gets applied to broadhead skinks in North Louisiana (and across the South) appears to be a folk name that conflates the orange head, the wide jaws, and the general aggressive appearance of a large male broadhead with the assumption of venomous capability. People who grew up calling them scorpions have passed the name and the fear down through generations, and correcting a folk taxonomy that has been in place for a century is uphill work.

A male broadhead skink sunning on a porch railing is not dangerous. He is digesting a beetle and warming his muscles for the next territorial display, and the orange head means he has a date later, not that he is armed.