Anyone who has sat on a New Orleans porch for more than five minutes has probably watched a small lizard dart across the railing or dodge behind a hanging fern. What most residents do not realize is that only one of the common types of lizards in New Orleans actually belongs here. The rest arrived by accident, by shipping container, or by way of the pet trade, and some have since outcompeted the natives they encountered.
This guide walks through five species a person is likely to spot in the city and the surrounding Louisiana parishes: the green anole, the brown anole, the slender glass lizard, the broad-headed skink, and the Texas horned lizard. Each has a distinct look, habitat preference, and backstory worth knowing before dismissing it as just another yard lizard.
1. Green Anole
The green anole (Anolis carolinensis) is the lizard most New Orleanians picture when they hear the word “anole.” Green anoles are the only native anoles to North America, and they have been climbing Louisiana trees, fences, and porch screens long before any of the other species on this list showed up. They belong to a group that stalks the treetops across the southeastern United States, which explains why they show up as often in live oaks as in backyard shrubs.
Males announce themselves with a flash of color under the chin. Males have bright red neck flaps known as dewlaps that puff out from under their chin in a crimson crest when calling for a mate or challenging another anole to a duel. When threatened, the lizard has one more trick: it can drop its tail to distract a predator, the detached appendage wiggling with a life of its own while the lizard slips away.
Green anoles also shift color, though not with the range people expect. Green anoles have a limited ability to change their colors, prompting the nickname “false chameleons,” since they can change only from green to brown while a true chameleon’s skin spans a much broader spectrum. Anyone curious about how anoles compare to other lizards commonly kept as pets can find more detail in this guide to popular pet reptile species.
Pro Tip: A green anole basking in full sun will often look tan or brown rather than green. Color alone is not a reliable way to tell it apart from a brown anole; check the shape and pattern of the throat fan instead.
2. Brown Anole
The brown anole (Anolis sagrei) is the green anole’s biggest problem. Since the 1940s, the brown anole, also known as the Cuban or Caribbean anole, made its way to Miami and has since spread rapidly across the South. New Orleans populations are now well established, and as climate change expands its warm, habitable range northward, the nonnative lizard keeps pushing further across the American South.
Researchers who study the two species describe a lopsided rivalry. “The brown anoles are much more aggressive than the greens,” one Louisiana Illuminator report on the species noted, and that aggression has pushed native green anoles higher into the tree canopy in many yards where both species now overlap. Part of the brown anole’s success comes down to how easily it hitches a ride with people; as one researcher put it, “it’s really good at traveling with humans.”
The two anoles are easy to confuse at a glance, so a side-by-side comparison helps with quick identification in the yard.
| Trait | Green Anole | Brown Anole |
|---|---|---|
| Native Status | Native to the Southeast | Introduced from Cuba/Caribbean |
| Typical Color | Green, shifts to brown | Brown or gray with mottled pattern |
| Dewlap Color | Red to pink | Orange-red with yellow edge |
| Behavior | More retiring, tree-dwelling | Bold, aggressive, ground and low-shrub dweller |
| Habitat Trend | Pushed higher into canopy where overlap occurs | Expanding range with warming climate |
For readers comparing anole populations across state lines, the situation looks similar in Florida’s lizard communities, where the brown anole first gained its Southeastern foothold decades ago.
3. Slender Glass Lizard
The slender glass lizard (Ophisaurus attenuatus) confuses plenty of first-time observers because it has no legs at all. It is a legless lizard with a yellow or brown body marked by six stripes, along with a mid-dorsal stripe and white specks on its scales that can form a stripe of their own. Adults can reach an impressive length; they grow up to 22 inches, with most of that length made up by the tail rather than the body.
Despite the snake-like silhouette, a few field marks separate glass lizards from actual snakes:
- Glass lizards have movable eyelids, while snakes do not.
- They also have external ear openings, which snakes lack entirely.
- Like other lizards on this list, they can detach their tails when grabbed, a defense no native snake in the region shares.
In Louisiana, this species keeps to drier ground than the marshy image many people have of the state. The slender glass lizard is most commonly found in dry pine woodlands, open prairies, and sandy grasslands, preferring well-drained habitats and staying more active on warm, sunny days.
It appears on the statewide species checklist maintained by wildlife biologists, alongside its relative the eastern glass lizard, confirming its place among the recognized lizards of Louisiana. Readers interested in other legless or unusual-bodied lizards may want to compare notes with the desert species covered in this guide to Arizona’s lizard fauna.
4. Broad-Headed Skink
The broad-headed skink (Plestiodon laticeps) is the largest skink most people will ever see in a Louisiana backyard, and it is genuinely native to the region. This species is native to Louisiana and is well adapted to both natural forests and suburban woodlots, preferring warm, humid environments and staying most active from spring through early fall.
Range maps compiled from decades of state wildlife records show a species with a wide but uneven footprint. Its Louisiana range covers the state broadly, though records are lacking in the southwest and north-central parts of the state. That patchiness likely reflects survey gaps as much as true absence, since the species tolerates a wide range of wooded habitats.
Unlike the smaller, ground-hugging skinks it shares habitat with, this species is comfortable overhead. Broad-headed skinks are one of the few skink species at home among trees, often climbing for cover and protection from predators. On the ground, larger individuals may consume snails, smaller lizards, or even small frogs in addition to the insects that make up most skink diets. During breeding season, mature males develop massive, swollen reddish-orange heads, and the Broad-Headed Skink commands attention simply through its size compared to Louisiana’s smaller five-lined and ground skinks.
Key Insight: A juvenile broad-headed skink with a bright blue tail is easy to mistake for a common five-lined skink. Size and head shape are the more reliable clues once the animal reaches adulthood.
Skink diversity of this kind is not unique to Louisiana. Readers curious about how skinks and other lizards differ across neighboring ecosystems can browse this overview of Georgia’s lizard species or this look at Tennessee’s native lizards.
5. Texas Horned Lizard
The Texas horned lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum) is the strangest name on this list, and also the most disputed. Physically, it is unmistakable: it is a flat-bodied, fierce-looking lizard from 2.5 to 7 inches in length with a large crown of spines on its head and dark lines radiating from the eyes, giving it the “horned toad” nickname despite being neither toad nor frog. Its diet leans almost entirely on one prey item: about 70% of its diet is made up of harvester ants, supplemented with termites, beetles, and grasshoppers.
Whether this lizard truly belongs on a list of New Orleans-area reptiles is a genuinely open question among Louisiana biologists. An investigation into decades of scattered sighting records found that the official Louisiana Wildlife Action Plan concluded there is “no evidence that the species was ever native to Louisiana” and removed it from the state’s list of species of concern. At the same time, the Texas horned lizard has effectively vanished from the state’s uplands, with no recent, verifiable records on the books, leaving biologists to debate whether it was ever a true resident or only an occasional visitor.
Important Note: Sources disagree on the Texas horned lizard’s native status in Louisiana. Some range maps list Louisiana as part of its historic native territory, while the state’s own wildlife planning documents now question whether it was ever established here at all. Anyone who encounters one in the wild should treat the sighting as notable and report it to state wildlife officials rather than assume its origin.
Where the species does persist, it faces the same threats that have hit its populations across the South. Sandy, open habitats were converted or overgrown, pesticides became widespread, and native harvester-ant populations collapsed, with invasive fire ants and agricultural shifts singled out as particularly damaging in the species’ eastern strongholds. Wildlife agencies in neighboring states document a similar pattern.
According to Outdoor Alabama, the lizard naturally occurs from Louisiana to Arizona, but has also been introduced in several isolated locations across the Southeast through the pet trade, which is why small populations occasionally turn up well outside the species’ historic range, including in parts of Alabama and other Gulf Coast states. Readers who want to see how this same species fares closer to its stronghold can check this guide to lizards native to Texas.
Its close relatives elsewhere in the world show just how varied the “horned” or “spiny” lizard body plan can get, from the beaded lizards of Mexico to the sun-loving uromastyx of the Middle East and North Africa. Those interested in that broader picture might enjoy this look at Mexican beaded lizards or this rundown of uromastyx species.
Watching for Lizards in the New Orleans Area
Four of these five species are easy to find in almost any New Orleans neighborhood with a bit of greenery: green and brown anoles on fences and porch columns, broad-headed skinks along wood piles and tree bark, and slender glass lizards in drier, sandier patches outside the city core. The Texas horned lizard is the outlier, and spotting one anywhere near the coast would be worth documenting and reporting rather than simply photographing for a feed.
The mix of native and introduced species in and around New Orleans mirrors a pattern seen in lizard communities nationwide, from the desert specialists of California to the tropical arrivals documented in Hawaii. Understanding which species are original residents and which are recent arrivals helps put every backyard sighting into a clearer context, and it turns a quick glance at a porch railing into a small lesson in Gulf Coast natural history.