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Lizards like to keep it in the family

By Emma Young

15 March 2003

AN AUSTRALIAN skink is the first reptile known to live in a stable nuclear family, where two parents live alongside their juvenile offspring.

Some mammal and bird species, and even a few fish species, are found in similar family units. But the discovery that a reptile also lives this way suggests that the nuclear family could be the ideal arrangement for a whole range of animals.

Dave O’Connor and Rick Shine from Sydney University studied more than 200 black rock skinks at a site in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. Some 83 per cent of all the social groups containing more than one adult …

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