BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

Had the mamas out and about tonight....Peach has something against Pearl; I couldn't put them together for even a second tonight.

Baby Buck and mama playing...


Mama looking a little thin, but she did just have babies.


Big mama Pearl


Best comparitive shot I could get -- I can't believe how aggressive Peach was to pearl....

Peach's tail is a lot different than her body colour...is that normal in that breed?

Kris

Beautiful skinks!
How cute is buck!!!

f.C

Three beautiful skinks.

You should be thankful you're across the world... I may have tried to steal Buck

A perfect looking crew mate

Kris--Peach's tail has regenerated (injury prior to Zach's ownership) but sometimes the color is different. My bluey Pele' and many others have a different color pattern on tails. It wasn't obvious until he matured. Notice how different Buck's tail looks.

Thanks for pictures of the mommies! I forgot how pretty Peach was (but now I'm quite partial!) Buck looks alot like Charlotte. It will be fun to see how they look as adults.

aggiegirl wrote:Kris--Peach's tail has regenerated (injury prior to Zach's ownership) but sometimes the color is different. My bluey Pele' and many others have a different color pattern on tails. It wasn't obvious until he matured. Notice how different Buck's tail looks.

Ahh ok, thanks for telling me that

Kris

my bluey is about a year and a half, but he wont grow much. how olds pearl?

awww

I love how their legs look so tiny compared to the rest of them. Great pics!

Pearl is still my favorite American northerns at this point.

KW

aggiegirl wrote:Kris--Peach's tail has regenerated (injury prior to Zach's ownership) but sometimes the color is different. My bluey Pele' and many others have a different color pattern on tails. It wasn't obvious until he matured. Notice how different Buck's tail looks.

Yep, in fact, almost all BTS have some color loss in their tails...

I almost didn't get these two because of their tails, but I'm so glad I did now. The previous owner only bought them to try to make a buck, but when no one bought them, I got a pretty good deal. My guess is that they were housed together and that's what happened. Because they really don't get along! It's funny, you can put the babies with Peach and she just walks around with them, put Pearl anywhere near her, and look out!

It might be a competitive reaction; if the mother ate her babies just because they were other blueys it wouldn't exactly help the reproductive cycles. I bet there's a window that they're "safe," but in a year or so, who knows. I wonder if there's a scent recognition or a smell that says, "I'm a baby!"

KW

And notice how fat Pearl still is!

Makes sense, Kyle; they've never gotten along since they came, but since the babies, it's' worse.

There just has to be some trigger that keeps blueys dispersed. It makes sense to the species to do so in the wild for good distribution.

More good reasons to keep skinks separated, though.

KW

KyleWeiss wrote:It might be a competitive reaction; if the mother ate her babies just because they were other blueys it wouldn't exactly help the reproductive cycles. I bet there's a window that they're "safe," but in a year or so, who knows. I wonder if there's a scent recognition or a smell that says, "I'm a baby!"

KW

Most animals do something similar to this. In dogs I call it the "puppy license." Adults have a tendency to be more tolerant to babies of their species than they are towards other adults. I completely agree that this is a evolutionary advantage. It wouldn't help the species much if the babies were all gobbled up (unless you're a fish or a crocodile, in which case....watch out kids! The adults didn't get the memo). I've noticed that its a much stronger instinct to not harm babies in species that have smaller amounts of offspring per year. Fish for example lay sometimes thousands of eggs, and many of them get eaten. But dogs don't usually attack puppies. Maybe its something similar with BTS. They sometimes have large numbers of babies, but not REALLY large numbers.

It's normally the same thing in cats. I'm fostering 3 adults and my two adult cats don't like them (which is why these guys get to hang out in the basement with the blueys!) but I'm also fostering two kittens and while my cats look at them like they are crazy for running around and attacking everything, they are very tolerent of them. So the kittens get to hang out upstairs (away from the blueys because they are way to interested in them!)

I must be an evolutionary anomaly; I kind of want to eat human babies sometimes...



...but yeah, I bet there's something else with dispersing the species that makes mothers agressive towards one another, moreso than normal. Therefore, they stay away, and the babies are more spread out, less competition, etc...

...that's my theory.

KW