northern suddenly very aggressive

[beaniebaby12]

Hi everyone,

So it’s been a while since i’ve been needing to post because everything has been going well. Normal eating, sleeping, tank has been good, etc. However, I’m unsure of where to go from here.

Beans has been unusually aggressive the past few weeks to anyone who approaches his tank. I’ll go to open it to clean up or to change his water, and he will lunge for me without hesitation. Even from outside of the tank, he will lungs to bite anything. I’ve taken him out and he physically is fine; no lesions, legs are working great, nothing out of the ordinary. It’s getting a little concerning because I don’t know if he just assumes hands=food…? It just seems like aggression over confusion and I’m not sure what happened to make him get this way.

Anyone face anything similar? I want to try to take him out even more, but I’m worried about this.

[splashy07]

How often does he eat? Hungry skinks do this frequently. I've also seen aggressive behavior when temps are too high.

[beaniebaby12]

How often does he eat? Hungry skinks do this frequently. I've also seen aggressive behavior when temps are too high.

Now that you say that, he eats 2-3 times a week, but I had to cut down on the actual amount I was feeding him because he was getting pretty fat. I had family coming in and feeding him too much fruit without my knowledge. That may be the reason and I think I’ll try feeding him more in quantity.

It’s also getting to be summer time and since I’m upstairs, my room gets a bit warmer than the rest of the house. I’ll try a lower wattage bulb than normal. The bulbs I’ve been using generally keep it at 95 for basking but I’ve been noticing it has been getting warmer on some days. I didn’t want to change anything yet because this is relatively new behavior and I had a feeling these could be the reasons, I wanted to hear from someone else first. Do you have any other suggestions?

[splashy07]

Not really, the only other time I've witnessed aggression is with gestating females and I know this isn't the case here. I've got two female easterns that are pretty much hungry all the time.
they'd eat every five minutes if you let them. Cut them back to once a week and they are still fat.

[beaniebaby12]

Yeah, I don’t have plans to have him gestating with females considering I don’t even know anyone else with a skink let alone a female northern. I cut him to once a week for a few weeks (more like every 5 days or so), and then went back to normal 2-3 times because I felt bad for the guy. However, it wasn’t his normal amount and maybe these changes have been freaking him out. He really grew some chunk and when doing my research before I got him, I saw some pictures of other skinks and while he wasn’t obese to the point of being a huge health concern, it was enough for me to notice.

Thank you for the input!! As I said, I had a feeling it was his food but I didn’t want to change anything without hearing from someone with more experience. I’ll get some new bulbs for him too and see if that changes things, but I’ll start with his food.