BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

Hi following from Kat's post here are a couple of photos of some Alpines to show the differences between mature females and males. Pictured are male (No. 2) and Female (Pat).

Bodies - note the longer body on the female at the bottom of screen. Nape of the neck is less discernible body, has fat storage on the jowels. She is about 57cm long but body is over an inch longer than the male. He is about 450grams, she is about 800grams having just had several babies in February.



Hips

Note the male at the top of screen has square hips without a lot of fat storage (sorry girls) at the base of the tail. Females hips are wider for obvious reasons as some of her babies were nearly 50 grams at birth.



Heads

Head shape and size alone is an unreliable indicator. Some of the biggest heads are on females. Because of the generally smaller bodies on the males the head has a bigger appearance relative to the body. This is a fairly typical sort of photo.


One just for the sake of it.

Thanks Scott. Those are perfect pictures to show the differences, and your explaination is great. Only problem is, I don't know what anyone else will be able to add!

I hope we can get the same kind of thread for every species. Of course some are not as easy to sex visually as blotchies, but it will still be good to compare pictures of known genders.

with the heads though,look at the differences relative to size,also the jowly look of the males noggin,skinny neck boof heady look as apposed to the big lass,scotts right it can be subtle the differences in head size alone,especially if they are of similar length.

lowlands males,even vic alpines are alot easier to sex,but like scott has already mentioned,its best to look at multiple areas to discern sexes,eg length,tail bases,head size ect,females over all appear longer bodied,usually solider in body and chunkier in tail base,but there are exceptions to keep you guessing,lol

always best to look at various signs,the more that add up the more posative you can become of sex

Great pictures, thanks so much for them Scott! Beautiful examples of the differences.

I agree with Jeff, I'd love to see threads like this for all species / subspecies. Thanks for the great info Scott and Richard!

This is so great! I'm glad we opened this additional forum.

Is there any chance of seeing these pictures? (as they seem to have gone, or is it just me that can't see them?).

Hi there all, don't know what happened to the original photos, I think something happened when the site was changed. Sorry they are so dirty, a little muddy in the enclosure at the moment.

I took some more photos today to help highlight the differences.

Nice shots scott,do you notice big hemipenal buldging by the time there ready to mate

mmm I would have to say no, but I'll keep more of a look out.

I hadnt either but small male i got off you,his enlarged after wake up,they seem to have peaked,noticed big alpines have enlarged now as well,so going to see if the others follow suit

Thanks very much for that Scott. You've got some beautiful animals. The difference is obvious in those photographs. It's very much a relative thing isn't it.

In this pic is same pr on the left,big peeling ones an old female,under her another female and in front of them a young male

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing the pics, it's really interesting to see the differences among a group.

Thanks for your pics and contribution to this topic Richard.