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speedforcemage

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speedforcemage · 4 years

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Hey, Ive kinda looked everywhere for info but can't find any sooo... you familiar with the varieties of blue tongued skink? I know there are many species and subspecies. My family and I want the most handleable and tameable variety (and prettiness is a nice bonus too). I can't find info on the temperaments of the different kinds though! Do you happen to know anything? Also do you know how to acquire morphs? A lot of breeders seem to be in australia but I'm in the US.

Yes!

Ok so the FIRST big difference is Indo/Australian. Generally speaking, the Australian species is calmer/more handleable- but that’s not a real species difference! That’s due to the fact that all Australian BTS are captive bred and born here. They’re around humans from the time they are babies and are used to the idea of being fed and handled.

Indonesian BTS are often imported and so you’ll see older animals readily available. They can certainly tame down, but they’re usually more skittish, and defensive at first. There’s also a great deal of color variety in these, but as far as I know there’s not a whole lot of morph breeding- I’ve seen axanthics pop up from time to time. There’s one possible separate species, possible subspecies, or even possible morph called the Irian Jaya, which is a very beautiful animal. Lovely coppery side stripes!

Australian BTS are a different species- Tiliqua scincoides. There’s two subspecies in the US, the northern and the eastern. You tend to see some crossing of these for morph development. These are the ones that have been bred for color morphs! Here’s a video that lists many of them. You’ll notice there’s just not nearly as much variety as you see in leopard geckos, but there’s still some really cool morphs out there.

youtube

You will notice something immediately: the fella speaking is Australian. This is why you’re not seeing a lot of availability of these morphs outside of Australia- they’ve got a really stringent animal export law (read: you ain’t doing it legally). A lot of these mutations simply aren’t outside Australian gene pools.

However, there is also some US work done with morphs as well. There’s a few big names out there- Andrew Seike and Jeff Greene pop up a lot as breeders for color morphs. I’ve pasted in another video talking about some of the animals available outside of Australia. Please don’t take this as an endorsement of this particular breeder; it looks like he’s breeding animals with congenital defects as well as using racks that don’t give these intelligent little guys much room at all to move around.

youtube

(you can skip to around 6:20 if you want to see the morphs)

Another list can be found here: https://www.reptilemountain.com/post/on-morphs

Reptile Mountain has a lot of information about skinks and breeding them, and this has a pretty good explanation of how we know what morphs are versus just an animal with a specific pattern.

So now you’ve got a bit more info about what’s out there, how do you even find one of these beauties?

Morph Market does have a skink section. https://www.morphmarket.com/us/c/reptiles/lizards/skinks?page=1

Make sure you really look into the breeder if you find one on there you like. Underground Reptiles and other big reptile clearing houses post there frequently, and they are notorious for animals with heavy parasite loads, as well as not sending you the animal you see in the picture.

You can also try “morph name blue tongue breeder” and see what you get when you just run a google search- if you know the name of your specific morph, you might have some better luck finding them!

I hope some of this info was helpful!

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speedforcemage · 5 years

Text

Drew this while I was at work. My dad didn't realize it was Wonder Woman?