Eastern Blue tongue Skink. Is it rare in the U.S.?

[ryan_mrtouchdown]

I was told there were no known "Eastern" Blue Tongue Skinks in the U.S.? I believe I have an Eastern Blue Tongue Skink.

Please someone help me out!

Here's a pic!

Sorry she just ate! lol

[xxmonitorlizardxx]

Their are a decent amount of Easterns just not a lot of them.
That looks like a Northern x IJ to me.
The colors on this pic are of can you get a better one?

[Richard.C]

Definatly has a northern look to it,possably has some ij influence to,but id say just northern,they are a subspecies of the eastern

[Fatal_S]

Welcome to the forum That'd be a Northern. Possibly a mix, but I don't see anything that screams that. More/better photos would help.

[ryan_mrtouchdown]

It was sold to me as an eastern and someone said it was an eastern. But they told me to come here to get a second opinion.

[Fatal_S]

Many skinks are mis-labelled as Easterns because that's the common blue tongue skink (as in that's what's it's called in Australia, where it's very common, it's a fairly uncommon species in the USA). I often see Indos and IJs labelled as Easterns too.

Looking up blue tongue skink gives the name Tiliqua Scincoides. That's a family of BTS, but usually that just gets used as the species. In that family are:
Tiliqua Scincoides scincoides (Eastern)
Tiliqua Scincoides intermedia (Northern)
Tiliqua Scincoides chimerea (Tanimbar)

There are other families too (Tiliqua Gigas, Tiliqua Rugosa, Tiliqua Nigrolutea, Tiliqua Multifasca etc). I'm missing some because I'm typing from memory. Anyways, point is there are lots of species, and they're all often labelled wrong by people who just don't know what the differences are.

[critterguy]

Looks like a Northern-I would say that this animal is somewhat suspect as a hybrid as the tail is pretty cleanly banded.