BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

this is something ive noticed alot with the northerns the last 3 seasons,and the more i see of it the more interesting it becomes

quite a few times when pairing,the males show not much interest.so i just leave them and kick back and watch,sometines as long as half an hour passes the male then lifts his tail and drops sperm plugs and instantly hes in the nood and strutting around in jittery manner and ends up going after the female he couldnt give 2 hoots about earlier

sometimes i get males just grab at females as im trying to place them in cage,possably already cleared sperm plugs,other times the placing of females in there draws the males attention,he checks her out mellowly,buggers off and ends up dripping sperm plugs then hes like a different beast

mind you some times they do all that,drop the plugs get all jittery strutty but dont do squat.maybe female not read
tonight ,placing females in with 4 females resulted in sperm plug droppage in all 4,the big kunnanurra went straight away,2 mins of strutting around checking big kunnanurra lass out then tried for close to ten mins grabbing her,shes super solid and he had a tough time even getting his giant jaw span to grab hold of her and eventually gave up and went back to basking

oddly he dropped a 2nd set of plugs not long after that

darwin/kunnanurra male also dropped close to straight away and had a valiant attempt with one young kunnanurra lass before giving up,20 odd mins later he went for a second young kunnanurra lass and made the money shot

big wild caught kunnanurra dropped with in about 5 mins of female going in,but just intently cruised his cage then went back to basking

young kunnanurra male basked for roughly half an hour with dark kunnanurra lass,casually just lifted tail and popped out plugs whilst basking,basked for roughly another 5 mins,in exact same spot then decided to just grab the dark kunnanurra lass who had been in his face for a while head waving and with out much exertion at all made the money shot

call me weird but i find this sort of thing interesting and dont hear alot about such behaviours

big male kunnanurra on placing big fiesty female in his cage,straight away time to clear plugs

oops,ill be darned,big old wildcaught males finally woken up and having a crack,better watch them,more pics shortly

all clear,wore him self out and has gone back to basking



ok heres the big kunnanurra males 2nd plug droppage after wearing himself out trying to man handle the solid fiesty lass whoms still basking in this pic

and heres young kunnanurra male basking with oddball dark kunnanurra female and his in process of dropping his plugs on the spot,where he sat for roughly a further 5 mins before finally giving into dark kunnanurra lass nudging his head whilst also head waving in his face and making the money shot so to speak

also have noted sone interesting afrer mating behaviour as i tend to leave them in there for a while at times but ill go into that another time

I've seen the same thing happen with my Merauke males. Usually early in the season.
Granted it could be happening later as well, but I'm usually not watching as closely... I generally put the ones I'm pairing up together, wherever it is I'm doing it, then I usually read a book or something and only look up when I hear the grabbing-commotion to see if it's a successful coupling, and to see if I need to separate for various reasons.

Haha

Yes im guilty of listening for the sound of commotion to,especially when i have a few paired up at same time

The other odd behaviour i was talking about is females sometimes actually egging males on to do something,might be an artifact of winter breeding here.though sometimes females are pretty nuch grabbed out of my hands when trying to pop them in with males,other times the males seem to wait a fair while

Doing pairings right now

Young male kunnanurra strutted about then went to basking,female displayed a little bit when he was strutting,and also went to bask,5 mins of basking and shes in his face and he dropped a set of plugs

Heres a pic just after plug droppage,watching to see what happens now

Haha,well those two got interesting,male eventually woke up and charged in to grab her but she bit him ,making him back away before plucking the courage and trying again,same result,he had another couple of goes and same thing,then just bit the bullet and went again and she made no attempt to fight it,they mated and last ten mins after mating hes cruising around following her gently nudging and licking her,zero aggression from either party

These guys are weird



Up one story and a cage across the big fiesty kunnanurra lass is doing same display to the big kunnanurra male