Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I used to be fairly active on this board talking about corucia, but as undergrad got heated up and i was competing for a slot in vet school i became less active, but now that im in vet school i plan on spending more time on the board chattin at folks. introductions aside..

I've kept corucia for nearly 5 years now and i have an ideas i wanted to bounce off of you guys that i found through observation. I tend to focus on breeding these guys since i think if you have corucia you SHOULD be trying to breed them:

We all know how aggressive they can be and territorial, but who rules the roost? I had always heard that if kept in groups a male establishes dominance and everyone falls into line. with the first group that i got there was a dominant one that consistantly bred another member of the group until one day i caught him dropping 2 slugs. wow that surprised me, guess i had to switch around how i was sexing them, now i think ihave it down, but this female literally tried to kill any new corucia. after gathering a new pair. one that i know is a female and one that i know is a male i tried mixing the 4. the original female tried to kill the others, but the original male gets along fine, si u have them set up 3 and 1 now. the original male seems old in his appearance and activity, which i think might be a reason for his inability to produce offspring with that one female.

My new female seems to be bulking up, so maybe ill get a little one soon. In your expeience, who initiates courtship? who displays most dominance? the lone female that i have has and prolly always will be super aggressive, but its defintely the best/healthiest corucia ive ever seen. any luck on trying to introduce males just for breeding purposes? shes had slugs on 3 occaissions since ive gotten her, but she hasnt bred with my younger male yet....hopefully my young pair will hit it off. anyone else keep multiple males together or multiple females? im curious how they react with each other socially.

Hi there. Congratulations on vet school. Which one are you at?

I have 4 skinks that I keep in groups as 1.1 and 0.2. The 1.1 pair has been together for a little over a year now with no problems. The 0.2 pair is relatively new (only a few months), and one is a juvenile, but they also have had no problems (knock wood). At my work juveniles were kept together in a group of 0.2.1 with no problems. Successful breeders that produced that grouping (juveniles were kept separate from adults) were two pairs that were maintained separately in groups of 1.1.

You might find interesting a series of article by Andrew J.W. Devare about his experiences with PTS. The articles appear in several different places, and the first one is published anonymously (at least in the version I have). He states that he has had groups with females as the dominant individuals. One even engaged in mating behaviours with another female and eventually had to be removed from the rest of the group due to aggressive behavior. He attributes her behavior to having been raised with another juvenile in the absence of adult skinks. I'm inclined not to give that argument too much weight, as there's nothing really to support it and I know of several institutions that regularly keep juveniles separate from adults and have not later had problems with undue aggressiveness.

The Devare articles are an interesting read, although it must be kept in mind that they are extremely anecdotal and he engages in alot of anthropomorphism. Here's a list of the articles that I've found:

2000. History and behaviour of captive Prehensile-Tailed Skinks. Herptile 25(4): 149-156.

2001. Some observations on behaviour, breeding and care of captive Prehensile-Tailed Skinks. Part I. Herptile 26(1): 8-18.

2001. Some observations on behaviour, breeding and care of captive Prehensile-Tailed Skinks. Part II. Herptile 26(2): 59-63.

Apparently this series was originally printed in the journal Reptilia in 1999, volumes 4-8 as a 5-part series.

I hope that's helpful to you.

-M

ohio state thanks for asking. i miss my corucia. they are back home with my dad. i miss hearing them bang around all night heh

I've always been told that "herptile" was a made up word and I never took anyone very seriously who used the word. You mean there is a serious professional journal by that name?
-----
Lucy
www.smalldragons.com

It is in fact the journal of the International Herpetological Society. Go figure. I've always felt the same about the word.