There is a snake-eyed lizard sitting outside your building right now. Their head cocks to one side as you walk past and if you’re close enough, their nimble body will disappear into the crack of a fence, under some bark, or into a hidden crevice that you didn’t even know was there.

The name given to them by scientists – Cryptoblepharus – means quite literally “hidden eyelid”. They belong to the skink family but just like a snake, their eyelid has fused into a transparent spectacle, giving them a glaring intensity as they make eye contact.

In the past 15 years, increased attention from scientists has seen this mysterious group of lizards grow from five recognised species up to 26. Some of these species cannot even be recognised visually and need genetic sampling for detection. Species that are hard to distinguish are called "cryptic species".

Different species of snake-eyed lizards have special body shapes depending on where they live. Despite their close family ties, rock dwelling lizards, tree climbing lizards and those that live on the ground, all have different features to help them survive. Rock dwelling lizards have slimmer heads so that they can duck into rocks. Climbing lizards need shorter legs to keep their mass closer to the tree.

This ability to adapt to different environments has allowed the snake-eyed lizards to boldly disperse to new places. They now occur in many different continents, through Madagascar, Indonesia, Australia and many islands in the Pacific.

One rather spunky species of snake-eyed lizard, the blue-tailed skink tells a cautionary and aptly, rather blue tale. They were common on Australia’s Christmas Island until the 1980s along with many other species that occurred nowhere else on Earth. Settlement of humans followed by cats, rats, giant centipedes, wolf snakes, invasive lizard species and yellow ants changed the environment.

This mass invasion was followed by the extinction of a bat known as the Christmas Island Pipistrelle. Lister's gecko, the blue-tailed skink and the Christmas Island forest-skink were next to be declared Extinct in the Wild and now survive only in human made cells, monitored under a strict breeding program.

If you care about having a diversity of species into the future it is important to tell our politicians that it is important to you. With national elections on the horizon, there is no better time to vote for leaders who care about more than their short term in office. If we lose these species, they are gone forever. There is no planet B.