Blue Tongue Skink

Scientific Name

This is a large lizard with long body, large head and small legs with delicate toes.
The tail is shorter than the body and generally tapers to a point.
Colour consists of a pattern of dark brown bars on a light brown or cream background; orange bars alternate with brown on the sides.
They have faint eye stripes and a cobalt-blue tongue.
Scales are shiny, overlapping, and contain small plates of bone.
Eardrums are sunken into cavities on sides of head.
Skin is shed in pieces.
They can shed its tail to escape predators and has a moveable and transparent lower eyelid to protect its eyes from dust and still see.
They might ingests small stones to help digest its food.

Northern blue tongues are among the easiest and most predictable breeder of the common blue tongues.
Unfortunately there is no reliable method to sex juveniles.
If your goal is to breed, you must either purchase proven adults or raise up juveniles until they can be sexed.
One reliable method of sexing adults is to house each blue tongue separately in a container void of substrate, the males will regularly shed small clear seminal plugs.

These lizards are omnivorous, eating a variety of insects, snails, carrion, flowers and fruits.
The reptiles are not very agile and the animals they eat are mostly slow moving.
Their teeth are large and they have strong jaw muscles so they can crush snails and beetles.

They live principally in open country with lots of ground cover such as tussocky grasses or leaf litter.
The Northern Blue Tongue lives in tropical/savannah woodland in the northern part of West Australia.