Reptilia · Squamata
Tiliqua scincoidesWhite, 1790
Common Bluetongue
Photograph by Doug Beckers, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, omnivorous skink from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 380 mm snout to vent.
Also called Eastern Blue-Tongued Lizard, Eastern Bluetongue, Northern Bluetongue.
Reptilia › Squamata › Scincidae › Tiliqua
- Grows to
- 380mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 30years
Longer than 100% of all skinks anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 24 to 500 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
44 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2017
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 30years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 33–33.2°C91–92 °F
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 33.15°C92 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 31.9–34.4°C89–94 °F
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009, Slavens and Slavens 1999: 26 and 7 months, Geer 2005: 14, Greer 1989: 17, Wilson and Swan 2009: 30 years in captivity, Robertson and Coventry 2019: more than 10 years in the wild, can reach 20 years
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 380mm15 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 299.1mm12 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 312.5mm12.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 84.5mm3.25 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 89.2mm3.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 1405.5g3.1 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 493g1.1 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 5g0.18 oz
max 380 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016)
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Omnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland, Savanna, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
- Region
- Australo-Pacific
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 10–500m
- Range size
- 3,476,650km²
invertebrates, vertebrates, Carrion and plant matter, Lissone 1999, see also Shea 2006, Koenig et al. 2001
Banfi et al. 2023
Diurnal (e.g., Swan et al. 2017, SM pers. obs., Robertson and Coventry 2019, Swan 2020, Farquhar 2021, Lazzari et al. 2022), Diurnal, crepuscular, nocturnal (Brendan Schembri, pers. comm. To Jules Farquhar April 2020), Diurnal (Steve Wilson, pers. comm. To Jules Farquhar April 2020), Glenn Shea, pers. comm. (April 2020): "This one is problematic. The nominate subspecies, T. s. scincoides, is predominantly diurnal throughout the year. The northern subspecies, T. s. intermedia, is seasonally strongly nocturnal."
Terrestrial, (e.g., Foster et al. 2018, Robertson and Coventry 2019, Swan 2020)
500-600 (Pengilley 1972)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, XX/XY
- Average clutch
- 11eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–25eggs
- Mean clutch
- 10–12eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 0.75per year
- Clutches a year
- 0.5–1per year
- First breeds at
- 24–36months
1-24 (Brown 2012), up to 21 (Robertson and Coventry 2019)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- Tiliqua scincoides scincoides (WHITE 1790) Tiliqua scincoides intermedia MITCHELL 1955 Tiliqua scincoides chimaerea SHEA 2000
- Described by
- White
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1790
- Type locality
- Australia
Keeping one
5 ft × 5 ft × 3 ft 1 in(152 × 152 × 95 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length of 15 in (380 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 91–92 °F (33–33.2 °C).
Preferred body temperature, recorded in a laboratory gradient where the animal could choose freely. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
Feeding
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
123kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 1,406 g, the heaviest recorded for Common Bluetongue — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
Morphs
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 3 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
What each pairing produces → · Two genes at once →
- Albinobreeder consensus
No black pigment, leaving cream and orange banding with red eyes. Rare in this species.
- Hypomelanisticbreeder consensus
Black reduced rather than absent, softening the bands and warming the ground colour.
- Subspecies and localitybreeder consensus
How wide and how orange the banding is, how dark the face is, and adult size. This follows the subspecies and population an animal came from rather than a single gene, and it does not produce a ratio.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
Others in Scincidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Tiliqua scincoides. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/tiliqua-scincoides
@misc{tiliqua_scincoides_2026,
title = {Tiliqua scincoides},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/tiliqua-scincoides}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.