Imagine a pet that greets you not with a bark or a purr, but with… a display of its bright blue tongue. The blue-tongued skink is just such a lizard, capable of eliciting smiles and amazement with its appearance alone.
These reptiles seem incredibly solid and a little clumsy. Their dense bodies, serious gaze, and slow movements give the impression of real little philosophers in the world of terrarium keeping. At the same time, they have a surprisingly calm and trusting nature.
The blue-tongued skink is an excellent choice for those who are just beginning to explore the world of reptiles. It does not require overly complex care, and its habits are quite predictable. This lizard can become a charming and calm companion for many years if you create the right conditions for it.
The blue-tongued skink is a bright, active, and extremely lively lizard that is perfect for terrariums of any level. It has beautiful coloring, with a bright blue tongue that stands out, and a friendly and calm disposition. This skink quickly gets used to people, loves to bask under a lamp and watch what is happening around it. With proper care, it feels good at home and does not cause any trouble. If you are looking for a cute and unpretentious pet, the blue-tongued skink is an excellent choice.
Habitat
The blue-tongued skink is native to Australia. In addition, representatives of this species can be found in New Guinea and Indonesia. The reptile inhabits a wide variety of habitats, from arid areas close to deserts to mountain forests, humid savannas, and coastlines.
Blue-tongued skink
This lizard is not afraid of human proximity and adapts well to suburban areas, gardens, and backyards of various buildings.
Appearance
The blue-tongued skink is a large lizard with a powerful body, a long thick tail, and short legs. Its large body is topped with a triangular head with small expressive eyes. Its scales are large and smooth, like those of a snake, and shine brightly in the sun.
Table. Appearance of the blue-tongued skink.
| Body parts | Brief description |
| Length of the animal | From 10 to 70 cm, depending on the subspecies |
| Body | Strong, powerful |
| Paws | Short, with five toes |
| Tail | Reaches 60% of total length |
| Scales | Smooth, large, dense, like a snake's, it glitters in the light. |
| Head | Triangular |
| Eyes | Located on the sides of the head, with a movable lower eyelid |
| Jaws | Strong |
| Teeth | Rounded, designed not for biting, but for chewing food |
| Tongue | Blue, sometimes purple |
The main distinguishing feature of the skink is its blue-purple tongue, which looks intimidating and can scare off predators.
Note: During the mating season, males show their tongues to their rivals in an attempt to gain the upper hand.
Tiliqua scincoides
Sexual differences
Only experienced breeders can determine the sex of a blue-tongued skink. It is better to check with the breeder in advance to find out the sex of the animal you want to buy.
If you already have a lizard at home but do not know its sex, pay attention to the following indirect signs:
- Males have a straighter body shape, while females have a convex shape in the middle of the torso.
- Males have bumps at the base of their tails, while females do not;
- The eyes of skinks are orange, but in males they are slightly brighter than in females.
The body is covered with smooth, large scales.
Unfortunately, indirect signs are insignificant and do not allow you to determine the sex of the animal with 100% accuracy.
Character, behavioral characteristics
Skinks prefer to live alone. They greet their relatives unfriendly: they open their mouths wide, stick out their long blue tongues, inflate their bodies, hiss, and do everything possible to scare away and chase away uninvited guests.
Even individuals of the opposite sex, when housed together, will constantly fight with each other. Only during the mating season will the lizards bury the hatchet to obey the laws of nature.
Photo of a lizard
The short-legged, powerful lizards Tiliqua scincoides do not particularly like climbing trees and only do so when absolutely necessary. They feel more confident on the ground and on warm rocks heated by the sun. This is where they spend most of the daylight hours.
Skinks in the wild
When kept in captivity for a long time, these unusual animals adapt to the terrarium, get used to people, and enjoy being petted—like cats, they love to be stroked on the head. They demonstrate their friendliness toward their owners in every way possible.
Housing conditions, care
Tiliqua scincoides lizards prefer spacious horizontal terrariums, not overly decorated, with warm incandescent lamps and comfortable flat stones on which they can relax.
Skinks require a spacious terrarium
Terrarium
The blue-tongued skink is a fairly large lizard that requires a terrarium with a capacity of at least 140 liters, made of durable glass or plexiglass, with ventilation holes. The approximate dimensions of the enclosure for an adult specimen are 90x45x30 cm. An 80-liter aquarium is quite suitable for young animals.
Soil
The following can be used as soil:
- artificial peat
- shavings from deciduous trees;
- pieces of deciduous tree bark;
- synthetic mats.
Wood shavings
In case of force majeure, you can build in the terrarium temporary bedding pieces of clean paper or napkins. This type of bedding should not be soaked with moisture, as lizards prefer dry air.
It is strictly forbidden to use the following types of substrates in a terrarium:
- bark or coniferous wood chips, whose vapors are toxic to lizards;
- gravel or sand – the pet may eat the filler and develop intestinal blockage.
Life hack! Take clay and cement, bind them with glue, and recreate a solid surface with any relief in the terrarium. It is not difficult to construct such a substrate, and caring for it is easier than easy.
Blue-tongued skinks are viviparous
Lighting
The daylight hours for blue-tongued skinks should last at least 12 hours. Incandescent lamps and ultraviolet lamps are used to illuminate the terrarium, which are fixed at the top. It has been proven that skinks can do without ultraviolet lighting, but “illuminated” individuals live longer, are less prone to stress, as their living conditions are as close to natural as possible.
Therefore, it is better to make sure you have a UV lamp.
Temperature
These charming blue-tongued lizards are sensitive to ambient temperature, so the terrarium should have several areas with different degrees of heating. At the bottom, you need to equip a cool, shaded corner with a temperature of 25-28 °C, and closer to the incandescent lamp, place a log, in the area of which the temperature should reach 33-35 °C.
Blue-tongued skink (Tiliqua Scincoides)
The average daily temperature in the terrarium should be between 26-30 °C. At night, the air should be cooled to 20-22 °C.
Tip! Place a thermometer in different parts of the terrarium. This will allow you to control the air temperature in your pet's habitat.
Decor, shelters
With their short legs, skinks are not very fond of climbing trees, but they still climb logs to get closer to the warm lamp and warm their sides thoroughly. Therefore, the following should be fixed in the terrarium a sloping log and 1-2 flat stones, on which the lizard can lie comfortably. However, you should not clutter the space with decorative elements, as skinks like space.
If you have purchased a skink, give it a few days to acclimatize, and do not disturb it during this time.
There should be no live plants in the house of a skink. The animal will definitely try them, and then suffer from digestive problems.
Diet
Skinks are undemanding in their diet and quite voracious animals. They are ready to eat any food offered to them with gusto. The main task of the breeder is to provide the pet with a balanced diet.
When kept at home, the lizard should be fed a diet of 75% plant matter and 25% animal matter.
Table. Diet for blue-tongued skinks.
| Types of diets | Diet |
| Plant food | Vegetables, fruits, berries, cereals, greens |
| Animal food | Snails, crickets, cockroaches, worms, zophobas, naked mice, squid, eggs, offal (liver, heart) |
| Additional components | Vitamins, minerals, special supplements for reptiles with high calcium content |
It is said that all skinks love bananas, but experts do not recommend feeding them too often.
Young animals are fed once every 1-2 days, adults every 2-3 days. As soon as the skink stops eating, the remains of the food are removed from the terrarium. Over time, the owner will learn to determine the size of portions for the pet by eye.
Skinks are prone to overeating. To prevent overeating from leading to obesity, these lizards should not be overfed.
Water
The terrarium should always have a shallow but stable a drinking bowl with clean drinking water. The water bowl should be rinsed daily and the water refreshed. In addition, the lizard should be provided with a bathing container. The container should be shallow and stable so that the lizard can easily climb out of it without tipping it over.
Popular subspecies
There are several dozen species of blue-tongued skinks. The most interesting ones are listed below.
Please note! Many of the listed species of blue-tongued skinks were bred in captivity thanks to the efforts of breeders.
Average length is 45-50 cm. The color is gray, gray-brown, with dark stripes all over the body.
It includes two subspecies: the northern New Guinea and the southern New Guinea.
Its body length barely reaches 10 cm. It was long considered extinct and was rediscovered in 1992.
Its embossed scales with a zigzag pattern make the lizard look like a large pine cone. It cannot shed its tail.
It has colorful coloring. The upper part of its body is dark, and the lower part is yellow.
Light cream color. Bright black stripes on the head.
Reproduction
The mating season for skinks begins in the Australian spring, which corresponds to autumn in Russia, and continues from September to November.
The female is the most active, walking in front of the male to attract his attention. Although in nature she might not do this, since skinks are monogamous, they live their entire lives with one partner and know each other very well.
The main distinguishing feature of Australian skinks is their blue tongue.
In their natural habitat, pairs live in close proximity. Most of the time, partners do not bother each other with their presence, peacefully chewing grass and invertebrate insects, sacredly respecting the boundaries of their territory, fiercely chasing away intruders, and coming together only to procreate.
Mating of skinks in captivity occurs as follows. The pair is kept separately. Before mating, the male and female are placed in a spacious terrarium with shelters. If the time is not yet right, the female may aggressively attack the male.
Eastern blue-tongued skink (Tiliqua scincoides scincoides)
In this case, the pair is again temporarily separated into separate terrariums. If fertilization has occurred, after 4 months the female gives birth to 5 to 20 babies.
The babies show independence almost immediately and do not need care. They weigh 20 g at a length of 14 cm. Two days after birth, the babies molt and begin to eat on their own. After the six-month-old skinks change their teeth, they are considered adults.
Diseases and health maintenance
Many diseases affecting blue-tongued skinks are caused by their indiscriminate eating habits and excessive appetite. In addition, these animals are prone to stress, vitamin deficiency, and certain other diseases.
Please note! Experienced breeders advise that if symptoms of any disease appear, do not self-medicate the skink, but consult a herpetologist veterinarian.
Table. Major diseases of blue-tongued skinks.
| Diseases | Symptoms, causes | How to cure the disease |
| Obesity | Obesity begins due to the excessive gluttony of skinks. At the same time, males lose interest in mating, and females suffer from infertility. | Monitor the animal's diet, do not overfeed it. |
| Stress | Skinks are very impressionable and can become frightened and ill even when they see an ordinary cat nearby. | Protect your pet from stressful situations. |
| Avitaminosis | Skinks are particularly sensitive to vitamin D deficiency. Without it, lizards become lethargic and lifeless. | Regularly irradiate your pet with a UV lamp |
| Mites | They look like white, red, or black wriggling dust on the animal's body. | Treating the animal with anti-tick medication |
| Shedding | Appears due to excessively dry air in the terrarium | The animal should be sprayed with clean water twice a day |
| Stomatitis | Cottage cheese-like discharge on the mucous membrane of the oral cavity. | Identify and eliminate the cause of stomatitis. |
| Scaly rot | Blisters filled with fluid appear on the scales. Over time, they burst, leaving open wounds behind. | Consult a herpetologist veterinarian |
Diseases and maintaining the health of a lizard
Interesting facts about the animal
The skink's tongue, protruding from its mouth, is twice as long as its head.
- Skinks chew their food thoroughly, moving it around in their mouths with their tongues. Other reptiles swallow food immediately after it enters their mouths.
- An ancient legend says that the skink's tongue turned blue when it was carrying healing ink for its owner in its mouth and accidentally crushed the vial.
- Blue-tongued skinks are ovoviviparous reptiles. The babies develop inside their mother in shells, but hatch just before birth.
How much do blue-tongued skinks cost? You can buy a blue-tongued skink at a specialized nursery or online store. Most of the lots on the market are for giant skinks. Their cost ranges from 4,000 to 20,000 rubles, depending on the age and size of the animal. Young animals can be purchased for an average of 6,000 rubles.
Blue-tongued skinks are active during the day, but they do not like heat very much.
So, the blue-tongued skink is a truly unusual and charming pet. It captivates not only with its bright appearance, but also with its calm, trusting nature. You can build a real relationship with it based on mutual curiosity.
Of course, such an animal is not a toy. It needs the right terrarium, a special diet, and your time. But if you are ready to create the right conditions for it, your efforts will pay off handsomely. Caring for a skink is a fascinating process that will teach you a lot.
As a result, you will get not just a silent lizard, but a real companion with a huge personality. A blue-tongued skink can become the highlight of your home and a source of joy for many years to come.
