Blue Tongue Skink

For more pictures, click Blue Tongue Skink Pictures
 

• Tiligua Scincoides

• A large lizard with a long body, large head and small legs with delicate toes.
• The tail is shorter than the body and generally tapers to a point.
  
• Color 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 a faint eye stripe 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.
  
• Ingests small stones to help digest its food.

• Found in Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea

• Northern blue tongues are among the easiest and most predictable breeders 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.

• Does not lay eggs, but give birth to live young lizards
• A female will only produce around 5-15 young lizards a year

• Adult: 17 to 24 inches

• 18 to 20 years

• 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.
  
• The lizards' teeth are large and they have strong jaw muscles so they can crush snails and beetles.

• Blue-tongued skinks 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.