Blue tongue waving.

[Shay&Murphy]

Good afternoon everyone.
I’ve recently got myself a young blue tongue (7 weeks old) after my 15 year old sadly passed away. His name is Murphy.
He’s settled in extremely well, eats a lot, loves exploring his tank and is good when being handled. I’ve kept his tank quite plain at the moment in order for him to settle in & really understand where his food, water, hot & cold hides are etc, as I’ve only had him for a week today.

I have a camera in my tank (I’m that crazy pet lady I know ) as I wanted to keep an eye on my previous lizard once I knew he was sick & just have not taken it out.
Throughout the day, I’ll occasionally check on Murphy.
He has worked out where the camera is & will look up to it if I move it around.

Anyway, point of the story, he has started doing this little arm wave thing (like a bearded dragon) while holding his head up high.
I’m just curious (and maybe a little paranoid) but does this mean anything? It’s not like he scratches at anything in particular, just at the air & I never seen my previous lizard do something like that. I have attached a photo, mid action of him doing this. After this, he moved towards the camera more, & did it again.

[splashy07]

I have to say I have no idea why he does that but it's absolutely adorable! So sorry about the passing of your other one.

[IvanDanko]

Second the condolences for the passing of your previous skink.

That picture is too good I have seen this exact thing before only when my skink Peanut drinks water (after a few big gulps he will do this - I think the arm waves around because he is trying grab something to raise his body to a higher angle to help the water go down) Not too sure what it means in your skinks context - unless he had a drink of water just before?

[Janella]

Arm waving in lizards is only done for 3 reasons that I am aware of: 1-Mating behavior (not the case in young lizards), 2-submissive behavior, 3-Acknowledging that something is near/close. Neat you where able to capture such a cool picture.

[splashy07]

Common with agamids but never observed in BTs. My beardie females do it all the time, as do my water dragons and it never stops being cute! There's not much cuter than a cage full of hatchling beardies all waving at one another. I had another thought, sometimes they are fascinated by a type of small light that may be coming from the camera ?