Shingleback skink

Shinglebacks live in dry parts of Australia.

They hide under bushes, logs and rocks.

Shinglebacks live only in Australia: from the southwest of Western Australia, across the south of the country, to western New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. They are common on the dry plains west of the Great Dividing Range, but they do not live naturally in Sydney.

They like dry, open country with ground cover such as grass tussocks and fallen leaves: mallee woodland, shrubland, coastal dunes and eucalypt forest. They can also live on farmland and at the edges of towns.

The IUCN describes an Australian endemic ranging from southwestern Western Australia across the Great Australian Bight to western New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, with its eastern and southern limit at the Great Dividing Range, and lists it in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia. It occupies dry to arid open habitats, including mallee woodlands, shrublands, coastal dunes and eucalypt forests, sheltering under dome-shaped, low-foliaged or thorny bushes (Kerr et al. 2003), and also degraded farmland and peri-urban areas. The Australian Museum adds that it favors open country with ground cover such as tussock grasses or leaf litter.

Shinglebacks eat plants and small animals.

They crunch snails and beetles with strong jaws.

Shinglebacks eat both plants and animals, and they eat more plants than other blue-tongue lizards do. They are not very fast, so the animals they eat are mostly slow-moving ones, like snails and beetles.

Their big teeth and strong jaw muscles let them crush snail shells and hard beetles.

The Australian Museum describes an omnivore that eats a wide variety of plants and animals, with more plant food than other blue-tongues. Because shinglebacks are not very agile, their animal prey is mostly slow-moving, and large teeth and strong jaw muscles let them crush snail shells and beetles. In its care, the museum feeds them chopped vegetables, kangaroo mince and insects and snails on different days, changing the order to imitate natural conditions.

There are lots of shinglebacks.

But on one island, people take them illegally to sell.

The shingleback is listed as least concern: it is common, adaptable and found across a huge area. People can keep shinglebacks as pets with the right licence, and they are also in the international pet trade.

One kind, which lives only on Rottnest Island in Western Australia, is listed as vulnerable there. Some people collect it illegally to sell, and cats may also have reduced its numbers. In towns, young shinglebacks are easy prey for dogs and cats.

Sanderson, Lloyd, Craig and Gaikhorst assessed Tiliqua rugosa as Least Concern (Global; assessed 21 February 2017, published 2017; trend stable) because it is common, adaptable and extremely widespread with no major threats to most subspecies. The Rottnest Island subspecies, T. r. konowi, may be declining or may have declined because of cat predation and ongoing illegal collection, is excluded from legal collection and is listed as Vulnerable in Western Australia.

The species can be kept as a pet under licence and is in the international pet trade; the Australian Museum describes it as highly trafficked and smuggled and reports research on its odor profiles to help identify trafficked animals. Its range overlaps protected areas such as the Rottnest Island Nature Reserve.