BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

Hi all! I come here every so often (love the forum) and noticed a couple of posts about humidity. I have a halmahera who was kept at very low humidity and thought it could be helpful for others to see why humidity is so important, and what happens if you don't maintain it!

This is Rhys. He was in pretty bad shape (kept for months in a heavily vented chipboard viv and on aspen ). He had lost all but one of his toes, and his feet were usually kept raised off the ground as they must have been too painful to walk on.




Here he is on the road to recovery! He was so patient letting me make sure all the shed came off his feet and mouth every time. Kept on coco fiber and given moist moss hides aplenty. He was happily walking about at this point and digging away as skinks do.


And here he is many sheds later!




He still has scars on his mouth and eyes, and he sometimes needs a hand keeping substrate out of the corners of his mouth (as you can see in the last pictures). I think he'll need his mouth cleaning up for the rest of his life. But otherwise he's come along so well and I hope he's with me for a long time!

Oh God those pictures made me cry. You are a saint for saving this beautiful animal. I pray everyone reads this post, especially those keeping Gigas skinks. Thank you so much for sharing this, so many skinks are mis-represented and are just grouped together as 'blue tongue skinks' and much info out there is geared to Northerns. More often than not the unscrupulous seller doesn't even know the genus or species they're selling. Thank you again for this most important information. And best of luck with your gorgeous pet!