Eastern blue-tongued skink

Blue-tongues eat plants and small animals.

They love snails!

They also eat flowers, berries and insects.

Blue-tongues eat both plants and animals. They eat wildflowers, native fruits, berries and fungi, and they catch insects and snails. They also eat animals that are already dead.

Blue-tongues are not agile, and the animals they catch are slow movers. Big teeth at the back of their jaws and strong jaws let them crush hard snail shells and beetles. In gardens they even eat snails that are not native to Australia.

The San Diego Zoo fact sheet lists wildflowers, native fruits, berries, fungi and probably foliage, with insects and snails as important prey; also young ground-nesting birds, rodents and small mammals (Horner 2004), in unusual cases native frogs, and carrion. Enlarged rear teeth crush hard foods (Wilson 2012), and NSW National Parks notes that, not being agile, blue-tongues use their strong jaws on slow prey such as beetles and snails. They flick the tongue while detecting food, and chemicals are sensed inside the mouth by the Jacobson's organ (Cooper 2000). In suburbs they eat non-native garden snails.

Blue-tongues like to warm up in the sun.

They are shy.

If you get too close, they hiss and show their blue tongue.

Blue-tongues are mostly active in the daytime. They spend their time warming up, looking for food and looking for mates. In hot places they are busiest in the early morning and late afternoon, and at night they shelter in hollow logs or under debris.

They are shy and usually move away from danger. If cornered, they puff up or flatten their body, hiss, and open their mouth to flash their blue tongue, which makes them look bigger. Like other blue-tongues, they can drop their tail to escape from a predator.

Mainly diurnal, blue-tongues reach midday body temperatures of 30 to 35°C (Koenig et al. 2001); in the tropics they are most active early and late in the day, and northern animals are largely inactive in the dry season. They usually retreat from danger, but when approached closely or cornered they inflate or flatten and arch the body, hiss and protrude the flat blue tongue; they bite only as a last resort. GPS tracking found daily movements of about 122 to 245 m (Price-Rees et al. 2014). In suburbs, home ranges averaged 12,700 m² for males and 5,100 m² for females (Koenig et al. 2001), and the lizards used corridors of dense vegetation and avoided crossing roads.

There are lots of blue-tongues.

But cane toads are poisonous to them.

In gardens, blue-tongues eat snails.

The eastern blue-tongue is listed as least concern because it lives across a huge area, and it is common in many places. But in northern Australia, cane toads are a big danger. These toads are not native to Australia, and they are poisonous to the lizards that try to eat them. Scientists think that training blue-tongues to dislike the taste of toads may help.

In towns, pet dogs and cats, cars and garden tools can hurt blue-tongues, and many are taken to wildlife rescue centers.

Shea assessed Tiliqua scincoides as Least Concern (Global; assessed 20 February 2017, published 2017; trend stable) given its wide distribution: the cane toad threat is localized and unlikely to cause declines rapid enough for a threatened listing. Cane toads are a significant threat, especially to T. s. intermedia (Price-Rees et al. 2009), and taste-aversion training may help (Price-Rees et al. 2011); T. s. scincoides is likely stable while T. s. intermedia may be declining. In suburbs they are injured by pets, vehicles and garden equipment and are frequently admitted to wildlife rescue centers in southeastern Australia. They can be kept under a recreational wildlife license and are in the pet trade, and many are captive-bred; export of wild-caught animals from Australia is banned. Subpopulations occur in many protected areas, including 46 national parks in Queensland.