60/40 ratio for Tiliqua gigas?

[Toria Dawn]

Kurt - I am not 100% sure that peppers are part of the 10% recommended fruit for blueys, though I know that they are technically considered a fruit. Yeah a lot of people think I'm weird for the vegetarian thing and weirder for the skink obsession!!

[Kurt]

Kurt - I am not 100% sure that peppers are part of the 10% recommended fruit for blueys, though I know that they are technically considered a fruit. Yeah a lot of people think I'm weird for the vegetarian thing and weirder for the skink obsession!!

After 3.5 years of being vegetarian I went back to being an omnivore this past March. I still eat vegetarian foods quite often though.

Since my Merauke is picky I use a reptile multivitamin once or twice a month. I also use the Repashy omnivore gel mixed in with dogfood/meat about once/month too. Just trying to cover all the bases...

I should try the mango and other more tropical fruits though since I have them in the fridge all the time.

[Lea]

Omnivores have many anatomical differences to carnivores. While they share some features, there are many other distinct features that set them apart. We could guess at the ratio, but it is best to look at the experience of others and see where and what has been successful for health and longevity in our captive blue tongues.


Animals are anatomically and physiologically adapted to hunt, kill and consume particular kinds of diets and I suppose the teeth is an obvious one, so I won't go on about the differences there, but we can look at the anatomy and musculature of the jaw itself, where omnivores have adapted to grinding, chewing and masticating food, rather than tearing, the mouth being used as a start point for digestion, releasing digestive enzymes to initiate the process before swallowing occurs. In true carnivores, the moth is merely used to tear and rip at flesh, before large pieces of prey are actually swallowed whole. The release of digestive enzymes is absent. In blue tongue skinks, the presence of salivary glands suggests that the digestive process starts in the mouth, even though food is not necessarily masticated to the same degree as in herbivores, for example.

Differences between carnivores and omnivores are seen in the stomach and intestines, too. Carnivores have a large, single chambered stomach. The stomach volume of a carnivore represents 60-70% of the total capacity of the digestive system, with short small intestines. digestion takes place in the highly acidic stomach, with absorption in the small intestines. Carnivores tend to kill only about once a week, with the large stomach volume an advantage, as it allows the animals to quickly gorge themselves when eating, taking in as much meat as possible at one time which can then be digested later while resting.. Carnivores are able to keep their gastric acidity extremely high, which is necessary for protein breakdown and to kill bacteria consumed with deceased prey. The colon is also rather short, allowing a more rapid excretion of waste.

Omnivores still have a relatively large stomach, but where digestion has already begun in the mouth, even though they possess a short small intestines, it's still usually double that of the carnivores to allow for absorption of nutrients from plant materials, which are harder to breakdown. The colon is also fairly short.

The differences may sound minor, but they are still present. The presence of attributes from both omnivore and carnivore adaptations suggests that although they are adapted well to eating a wholly meat diet, their dentition, jaw musculature and alimentary system all display the ability to cope well with ingestion and digestion of plant materials, in an omnivorous diet. Pure carnivores would not show the adapted anatomical ability to doing so.

Skinks have a significant amount of meat in their diets, therefore they must retain the anatomical features that permit them to capture and kill prey animals. But they lack the musculature and dentition to rip flesh from bones or hold down large prey items. The molars are designed to chew and crush food before swallowing, allowing them to take advantage of the addition of plant material in their diets. However, since they lack a multi-chambered stomach, often present in ruminating herbivores, it also suggests they lack the ability to digest wheats, grains and grasses, giving us more insight into what the vegetable portion of the diet should contain in captive animals.

Since skinks possess the ability to cope with both a carnivorous diet, as well as that of an omnivore, it makes sense that their adaptations are because they require both meat and plant matter for optimum nutrition. While we may have witnessed very little In the field to support theories either way, their anatomical structure speaks volumes. As opportunistic feeders, even a long and arduous field study of skinks in their natural habitat, may never give a true reflection of what is actually optimum for survival, it may only give us an idea of what they eat from the available food sources- which might not always be the best thing for them.

Looking at the health of our animals is also very difficult, since problems are often insidious in nature, slowly getting worse without ever presenting themselves until an animal dies in our care.

As has been said already, we can feed them and assume we have a healthy animal, when inside, the picture could be far from it. For now, experimenting with small populations of animals is just not on as we can not see what is truly happening to our skinks. Unless we subject them to blood tests and other invasive study, we just don't know. We are better to listen to the voices of experience and the wisdom of time, where animals have lived long, healthy lives with experienced keepers, remembering that there is not one way to do things right, but there are still a thousand ways to do things wrong.

[Dakota]

Very good outlook on it, Lea.

[Richard.C]

wild diets have nothing to do with captivity,i dont understand why people want to mimick it,wild diet is about survival,they pig out on what evers about in times of plenty to survive times when food is lacking,they dont have luxury of thinking hmm,i need 60 percent of this and 40 of that,they eat whats there to be eaten,alot of it being vegetation,as it cant evade there capture

captivity tskes away the inconsistancies,we offer more food,a more optimum diet if we do our homework,ideally in the 60/40 range

the more you go away from that the more important supplementation becomes and the more u see dietry related issues kick in

some of our overthinking we think will be to there benefit can actually do more harm then good