Off-Topic: Corucia pix

[Celeste]

Some folks asked me to post pix of my Corucia, so here are a few:

A VERY pregnant female:


A mother and newborn baby (both being shy):


A newborn baby:


A pair of inquisitive one-year-olds:



Enjoy!

-- Celeste

[Bird_Brain]

Beautiful! You are very lucky to own so many. They are on my "list" of future reptiles to own!

[jasjmm27]

AMAZING! Love the monkey tails! I like the first pic with what must be the male (?) hanging upside down! That's great!

I love these skinks, it was the Shingles and Prehensiles that first caught my interest in this "family".

That is a VERY pregnant female, for sure! How many young do they have, that newborn looks HUGE!

[Celeste]

No -- that one hanging upside down is the *baby*! :->

They typically have only a single, very large baby (occasionally twins, 'though other breeders who post to my yahoo group report a high mortality rate among twins). Bert Langerwerf reported the only known case of triplets. You can see how big the baby is compared to the mother in the second picture. And they only give birth every one to two years... Their gestation period is 7.5 months, and like the shinglebacks (and blueys?), they are among the few *placental* reptiles.

-- Celeste

[jasjmm27]

WOW! Those are AMAZING skinks! How big is that female? I see they can get to 30" or so...that baby is just INCREDIBLY LARGE! That gives these pictures a whole new meaning for me! AMAZING, they are awesome animals. It says they form "cliques" and may kill others that don't "fit in", so you can only keep pairs together, or do you have to just observe for the first few days while you are introducing more? These are incredibly interesting...think I might have another topic to supplement my sleepness nights of research!

[Bird_Brain]

In the last picture, the skink on the right. Do they normally keep their patterns? The ones I usually see dont have such a distinctive pattern on it. I really like that one!

[Celeste]

Corucia form tightly-knit extended-family groups. They also have an established territory in the wild, marking and recognizing it (and other members of their group) by scent. I am not sure what the composition of those groups is in the wild, but in captivity you can't generally have more than one adult male in a group. I try to keep mine in 1.2 trios (plus their babies). The babies don't reach sexual maturity until they are three or four years old, so they can stay with the parents for a couple of years. (I would not recommend separating them from the parents before they are at least 4 months old -- they need the emotional security of adults around, and they also need to acquire the gut bacteria needed to digest their food).

The males will AGGRESSIVELY defend their pregnant females, and *all* members of an established group will AGGRESSIVELY defend any baby in the group (at least for the first few months of the baby's life). We are talking "launch-themselves-across-the-enclosure-and-try-to-kill-you" aggressive. Even previously docile animals will show this behavior. (Really makes cleaning their water bowls an adventure!)

It can be extremely difficult to add any new adult to an established group, but (supposedly) babies are accepted readily. I pulled all the one-year-olds from their groups this fall, so the groups wouldn't get too crowded with the expected crop of babies this year (they seem to like to give birth around November-January in this part of the world), and set up two new groups (one 1.2 trio and one 1.1 pair) with the yearlings, and aside from a little indignant huffing, there was no bloodshed. But I have tried to pair up two-year-olds in the past, and had a lot of aggressive behavior. Introducing an unfamiliar adult male and female can sometimes be very hazardous, too. (I have a few tricks I use, but nothing is foolproof).

In that last picture (of the one-year-olds) those two were in the process of changing from their baby pattern to their adult pattern. So they won't stay that way. No way to tell exactly what they will look like as adults. (That's part of the fun!)

(See what happens when you get me started talking about Corucia?)

-- Celeste

[shingleback aus]

those are awsome skinks i want one!!

[kris21]

In the last picture, the skink on the right. Do they normally keep their patterns? The ones I usually see dont have such a distinctive pattern on it. I really like that one!

Yeah i like that one too!
Very cool creatures!

Kris

[jasjmm27]

WOW!!! (again) Those are incredible creatures with an amazing social (and emotional?) structure! That's so cool, I bet I could just sit there and watch them like it was TV! Actually, that is pretty much what I watch anyway (discovery and science channels)... Feel free to go off on more fun explanations of their activities! That is really cool information, especially to think how they need the emotional support when they are young and how they have their family groups and how it is so hard to get into the "cliques" or family groups...even the fact that they HAVE those groups! That's really cool! Thanks for sharing a few tidbits of your experiences!

[Zach]

Thanks for all the great info!!

I always say MTS are the only other reptile I've ever been interested in. I've never even seen one in person...

[Jenn]

I love the way those guys look!

[NomadOfTheHills]

Awesome! I am assuming the babies eat the feces of the adults to get the intestinal flora, like Green Iguanas do?

[mewzic-7123]

these are awsome skinks, i love how their tail is made, to be truthful, i was gonna get one of these guys instead of a B.T. Great pics!!!!

[Shadowfax]

Awwwwwww, I looooooooove MTS -- if they were as easy to keep as blueys, I would totally have one, but I still love to admire them...

[LittleFoot]

Awesome pics and thanks for all the great info. It must be great watching their social structure. They are ebautiful animals you have.

[jasjmm27]

Celeste, are there any interesting web pages, documents, or books about Corucia that you would recommend to someone with a beginning interest in them? Something to explain a bit about their social structures and how they go about life? Just curious, I would like to see more on them.