BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

I was curious about this. apparently some boas can see in color, but can skinks? thanks, alyy

Many BTS love white things (to try to eat).

All of the information that I've been able to find on this points to the answer being yes.

Reptiles however have different rods and cones in their retinas in different proportions to us. Many reptiles are believed to be able to see things in the UV spectrum which helps pick out prey that would otherwise be hidden in our visual spectrum against their background etc.

They seem to respond the colour red better than other colours as a visual cue for food.

i 'as just curious as my blueys seem to respond better to bright blue food dishes than the black alternate.

There are several articles on the web with similar results to this.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 7281800656

of course one has to keep in mind the potential that brightness or saturation of colors could cause potentially colorblind animals to be able to distinguish colors. That being said-other lizards have been shown to be able to see color. Some scincid lizard males do display bright coloration...so it is most likely that Tiliqua can see color-though it doesn't play much role in interactions amongst themselves.

Excerpt from http://www.environment.gov.au/biodivers ... ncidae.pdf


"Little is known of the retinal structure of skinks (Peterson 1992) and no direct
demonstration of colour vision has been made. Lizards have an all cone retina
(Goldsmith 1990), with multiple visual pigments, and ‘all species tested in
discrimination studies have colour vision’ (Cooper & Greenberg 1992), so that
colour vision is probably normal for this group."

I'm not sure if this is completely related to the topic of distinguishing colors, but do skinks have poor night vision or is Adalon just a special case?

I ask this because sometimes when I put him to bed or wake him up when the lights are out or nearly out, he will sometimes run full speed at his hide or items in the cage and just crash into them. I can see this happening when waking him up and he just instinctively has the fight or flight mentality and runs, but it seems odd he would do that when I'm gently lowering him into his cage. He doesn't seem to ever do this when I have him under a blanket or shirt even though it's completely dark too, but it could be he feels more safe and secure there?

When the lights are on I've never seen this kind of behavior, so it leads me to believe that he has some form of night blindness or there's something at play here that I don't know about. Of course now I turn the lights on when I interact with him now, but it's still something I've never read about or seen mentioned on these forums before.

im not sure i can answer the question by writing this, but i did a small experiment when i noticed my bluey seemed to pick red sallad more often than green. It happens so often even my mother sees it as if he has a colour preference.

so i took two to him new salad types he had not tasted before. and put ( a bit separated ) in a big bowl, and guess what...once more he nearly ignored the green and picked the red.

Of course hes a sloppy eater so he ate a little here and there, but the difference at how he picked the salad he ate really showed.

kinda fun. Doesnt work as well when theres meat involved And its not very scientific since ive only done it as a real test once.....but maybe others can try?

And also, it could be he sees black and white and just likes darker food.

One way you could try to test this is to target train him to one color and then present two targets(red and green) and see if he always picks one of them.

What I think would be really cool for you to try would be to target train him to the green target. Then offer a choice between the green and the red. Will previous preference prevail? Or will the training? Some flaws in this experimental design but the results would be interesting.

from the book "Lizards - windows to the evolution of diversity in nature" : "By definition, the reception system for visual displays is the optic system. Not only do most lizards appear to detect and discriminate colors, but some also detect UV light, adding a dimension beyond what we ourselves perceive. Establishing the neurophysiology of color vision in lizards has been elusive at best(Peterson 1992; Schenck 2000). Retinas in lizard eyes have high cone density - suggesting high visual acuity - but lack rods. Although some lizards have rodlike structures, evidence is lacking that they are homologous to rods in other tetrapods. In addition, diurnal lizards (but not nocturnal ones) have oil droplets in the cones of their retinas; these are pigmented and most likely act as filters contributing to color vision."

So they may not see in color quite the same way we do, but it's highly likely that they do see in color.

How funny, I was just about to ask the question about BTS' preference of color in the General Discussion forum. I hadn't seen this thread because I was out of the country most of the summer and didn't follow the forum.

I was about to ask if others had noticed the preference of RED with their BTS, or if this was freak coincidence with two of mine?

The first time I noticed it was after Joey had been sick and had not eaten for quite a while. I put him on our oriental-type rug, and he started to try to pick up the bent, red patterns of the rug. At the time I thought he maybe figured they were worms, so I quickly went and bought some big fat mealworms. Nothing.

The other day I had Jazz out on the lawn and he headed to walk between my feet, but stopped, turned, and tried eating my painted red toenails!

Now I read Linnea's Litchie preferring red too. Antbody else notice anything like this?