Blue Tailed Skink Care: Found One? What to Do

Blue tailed skink care depends on one fact most searchers do not know yet. “Blue tailed skink” is not a single pet species. It is the juvenile color stage shared by several North American skinks in the genus Plestiodon.

The most common are the five lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) and the broadhead skink (Plestiodon laticeps). Also common are the southeastern five lined skink (Plestiodon inexpectatus) and the western skink (Plestiodon skiltonianus). All four hatch with five to seven pale stripes and a bright blue tail, and all four are wild native reptiles, not pet trade animals.

That distinction changes the whole picture for blue tailed skink care. Work through identification, the law in your state, and whether keeping the animal is the right call at all. Do this before setting up an enclosure.

The sections below cover a found skink first. Then they cover full husbandry for a legal captive bred skink or a genuine short term rescue.

Found a Blue Tailed Skink? What to Do First

A blue tailed skink darting across a porch, woodpile, or garden bed is almost always a hatchling Plestiodon. It already lives nearby, and it did not escape from a tank. Its parents, siblings, and food source are within a few yards of where it was spotted.

Answer three questions before touching the animal.

• Is it injured, or moving and alert? A skink that runs, grips your hand, and tries to bite is healthy and does not need rescuing.
• Is it trapped inside a house or garage with no easy way out? That is the main legitimate reason for brief intervention.
• What does your state allow? Check the law and welfare section below before deciding to keep it.

For a healthy skink found outdoors, the best outcome is almost always to leave it alone. If it is in immediate danger, such as a swimming pool or a cat’s reach, move it a short distance to cover. Then let it go.

Wild juveniles rely on a home range they already know. That range provides their food, shelter, and predator avoidance.

Relocating one even a few hundred yards can strand it away from that range. So can keeping it for weeks before release. Return it close to where you found it.

Is It Legal to Keep a Blue Tailed Skink?

Collection and possession rules for native reptiles vary by state. Any blue tailed skink care guide that skips this step is incomplete. Connecticut classifies its five lined skink population as state threatened.

The state wildlife agency’s guidance is explicit. Observe the animal from a distance and leave it alone rather than capturing it. Never release a pet store skink into the wild, because of disease risk to native populations.

Connecticut’s own five lined skinks live in only a handful of known sites in the western part of the state. That rarity is one reason the protection exists there.

Other states treat common, more widespread five lined and broadhead skink populations differently. Some allow limited personal collection of common native herps. Others require a permit for any capture.

A species can be common in one state while protected in the next. There is no single national rule. Check your state wildlife or fish and game agency’s nongame or native reptile regulations before keeping any wild caught skink.

Never look for ways around a rule that says leave it in the wild. Two guardrails apply almost everywhere. Wild caught native reptiles should never be released far from where they were found.

Captive bred or pet store reptiles should never be released outdoors at all. They can carry disease or parasites into wild populations.

The rule may be unclear where you live, or you may not be able to confirm it is legal to keep one. If so, the safest and most welfare positive choice is simple. Let a healthy skink go where you found it.

Short Term Care Before Release or ID

You might hold a skink for a few hours while confirming it is safe to release, or briefly contain one that got into a house. Keep that setup simple and low stress. A tall sided plastic container with a secure, ventilated lid works better than a glass tank, since a stressed skink will climb and can injure its nose against glass or wire mesh.

Add a layer of damp paper towel or leaf litter. Include a small piece of bark or cardboard to hide under. Keep the container at room temperature, out of direct sun.

Do not offer food. A skink held for a few hours does not need it, and feeding right before release is unnecessary. Release it the same day, in the same general area it was found.

Choose a release spot near cover, such as a woodpile or rock pile, rather than open lawn.

Identifying Which Skink You Found

All four common blue tailed species look similar as juveniles, but adult range and habitat separate them. The five lined skink ranges from lower Michigan, southern Ontario, and eastern New York south to northern Florida. It reaches west to Wisconsin, Missouri, and eastern Texas, and prefers moist, not wet, wooded ground.

The broadhead skink overlaps much of that range, from Pennsylvania to Florida and Indiana to Texas. It is more arboreal than the five lined skink. It climbs trees and stumps while still nesting and hunting on the ground.

The southeastern five lined skink is found mainly in South Carolina and most of Georgia. It favors drier habitat than the five lined skink, including dry pine forest, coastal areas, and abundant fallen wood. It also lacks the enlarged scales under the tail that some similar species show.

The western skink occupies the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain West, including eastern Washington and Idaho, in dry open forest, shrub steppe, and grassland. It is the blue tailed species most likely encountered west of the Rockies. See the five lined skink guide for adult identification, size, and range detail specific to that species.

Range and habitat by species are mapped out on the blue tailed skink habitat page.

Why the Blue Tail Fades

The bright blue coloring is a juvenile trait, not a separate species trait. It fades or darkens toward gray as the skink matures. In the five lined skink, the tail dulls with age and is more often kept into adulthood by females; adult males typically show a gray tail instead.

Connecticut’s wildlife agency notes the same shift. The blue darkens to gray as the animal grows. Skinks can also drop the tail entirely to escape a predator’s grip, a defense called autotomy, and the regrown replacement is shorter and grayer than the original.

In the broadhead skink, adult males lose the striping entirely. They turn uniform brown with orange to red heads that intensify during breeding season. Adult females keep some striping but lose the blue tail.

The southeastern five lined skink follows a similar pattern. The blue fades by maturity, and adult males sometimes develop a reddish head.

This shift is a normal part of blue tailed skink growth. It is not a sign of illness or stress. It is covered in more depth on the blue tailed skink size page.

Blue Tailed Skink Setup If Keeping Is Legal

The enclosure follows the same general principles used for other small, active, ground and rock dwelling insectivorous lizards. This applies to anyone with a legal, long term captive, most often a captive bred five lined or broadhead skink rather than a wild caught juvenile.

The Merck Veterinary Manual allows 0.2 square meters of floor per 10 cm of total length for terrestrial lizards. That puts an 8 inch adult in a 36 by 18 inch footprint. A 20 gallon long suits only a juvenile or the smallest adult.

These skinks spend most of their time on the ground rather than climbing glass. Line the floor with a substrate that holds a little moisture without staying wet, such as a coconut fiber and topsoil mix or cypress mulch. Use several inches so the skink can dig, and skip loose gravel, which Merck warns can be swallowed with prey.

Add flat rocks, cork bark, and a piece of half buried log. These recreate the rock ledges and rotten log cover five lined skinks use in the wild.

Include at least two hides, one on the warm side and one on the cool side. This lets the skink thermoregulate without choosing between heat and shelter. Full enclosure dimensions and furnishing lists are covered at blue tailed skink enclosure and the general lizard enclosure guide.

Blue Tailed Skink Temperature and Lighting

A thermal gradient is the core requirement for blue tailed skink temperature management. The Merck Veterinary Manual gives 68 to 91 degrees Fahrenheit as the working range for temperate and tropical reptiles. It puts the basking spot 9 degrees (5 Celsius) above the air.

For a temperate woodland skink that means a basking surface of about 88 to 92 degrees over warm side air in the low 80s. The cool end should sit at 72 to 76 degrees. No published figure exists for these species specifically, so those are Merck’s general numbers applied to their documented habitat.

Let the temperature drop about 9 degrees overnight, to 65 to 70, to mirror the day and night swing these skinks experience outdoors. Use a digital thermometer with a probe on each end, not a stick on dial gauge. That is the only reliable way to confirm the numbers are accurate rather than guessed.

Diurnal, ground dwelling skinks that bask outdoors need UVB lighting in captivity. UVB in the 290 to 300 nanometer range lets reptile skin synthesize vitamin D3, which the body needs to use dietary calcium. Use a fluorescent UVB tube built for reptiles.

Mount it within 12 inches (30 cm) of the basking spot, per Merck. Replace the tube every 9 to 12 months even if it still lights up, since UVB output drops well before visible light does. Pair heating and lighting on a timer.

Run a 12 hour photoperiod, close to what the animal experiences in the wild during its active season.

Blue Tailed Skink Humidity

Blue tailed skink humidity needs sit in the moderate range rather than the high humidity many tropical reptiles require. Five lined and broadhead skinks come from moist but not wet woodland rather than rainforest. Merck lists 30 to 50 percent ambient humidity for temperate zone reptiles, checked with a hygrometer rather than assumed.

The moisture these skinks use in the wild sits under logs and rock, not in the open air. Keep the lower substrate lightly damp and add a humid hide of damp sphagnum moss. Expect humidity needs to rise during a shed.

Mist the enclosure lightly if the substrate dries out fully. Keep a shallow water dish available at all times so the skink can drink and soak on its own schedule.

Lengths in the table come from wildlife agency and university species accounts. The feeding intervals are common keeper practice for small insectivorous lizards, not a published figure for these species.

Blue Tailed Skink Diet

Diet is one of the more straightforward parts of blue tailed skink care. Wild five lined skinks eat a wide range of invertebrates: spiders, millipedes, crickets, termites, grasshoppers, caterpillars, and beetles. Larger adults occasionally take small vertebrates such as frogs, smaller lizards, or young rodents.

The southeastern five lined skink eats a similarly broad mix of insects and spiders.

That variety is the model for captive feeding. Offer a rotation of appropriately sized crickets, roaches, and occasional waxworms or silkworms rather than a single feeder species. Gut load prey for 24 hours before feeding.

Dust prey with a calcium supplement most feedings. Add a vitamin D3 supplement on a lighter schedule if UVB exposure is limited. Feed juveniles daily and adults every one to two days.

Offer only what the skink clears in about 10 minutes. This avoids loose feeder insects harassing the animal overnight. See feeder insect basics and the species specific blue tailed skink diet guide for supplement schedules in more detail.

Handling, Bite, and Tail Loss

Five lined and broadhead skinks are fast and alert. Wild caught or captive bred, neither is inclined to sit still for handling. A defensive bite is a startle response rather than a health threat, since these small insectivorous lizards have no venom delivery system built for defense.

Full bite and venom detail lives at blue tailed skink bite and venom.

The bigger handling risk is tail loss. Like most skinks, blue tailed skinks drop their tail through autotomy when grabbed or badly startled. This defense lets the animal escape while a predator is left holding a still wriggling tail.

The tail regrows, but the replacement is shorter, grayer, and less flexible than the original. Avoid grabbing by the tail, or letting a child pick one up by the tail. Support the body instead, and keep handling brief for any wild caught or recently rescued individual.

Health Signs to Watch

A healthy blue tailed skink is alert and moves with a quick, low to the ground gait. It also has clear eyes and an even body condition. Watch the tail base, where these skinks store fat reserves; a visibly sunken tail base is a warning sign.

So are lethargy, refusal to eat over several days, retained shed around the toes or tail tip, and labored breathing. In blue tailed skink care, any of those signs warrants a call to a reptile experienced veterinarian rather than a wait and see approach. The general lizard health guide covers warning signs across species in more detail.

For anyone still deciding what a found skink needs day to day, the broader skink care overview covers identification outside this page’s scope. So does the parent blue tailed skink guide, which compares the species that share this stage.

The general reptile care hub and skinks overview are useful starting points for comparing skink species more broadly. Blue tailed skink breeding covers egg laying and clutch behavior if that is the next question.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a blue tailed skink a good pet for beginners?

Most blue tailed skinks people encounter are wild, not pet trade animals. The first decision is usually release rather than husbandry. A captive bred five lined or broadhead skink suits an intermediate keeper comfortable with live insect feeding and precise temperature control, unlike a commonly bred pet species such as a leopard gecko.

Can I legally keep a blue tailed skink I found in my yard?

It depends entirely on your state. Connecticut treats its five lined skinks as state threatened and its wildlife agency advises leaving them alone, while other states allow limited collection of common native reptiles. Confirm the rule with your state wildlife agency before keeping any wild caught skink.

How big does a blue tailed skink get as an adult?

Five lined and southeastern five lined skinks reach about 5 to 8.5 inches in total length as adults. Broadhead skinks grow larger, up to roughly 12.75 inches, with males noticeably bigger than females.

Why did my blue tailed skink’s tail turn gray?

The bright blue color is a juvenile trait that darkens toward gray as the skink matures, most visibly in males. A tail lost to a predator attack or rough handling grows back shorter and grayer than the one the skink hatched with.

What do blue tailed skinks eat in the wild?

Wild five lined and related skinks eat mostly invertebrates: spiders, millipedes, crickets, termites, grasshoppers, caterpillars, and beetles. Larger adults occasionally take frogs or young rodents. Captive diets mirror that variety using gut loaded feeder insects rather than a single species.

How long do blue tailed skinks live?

In the wild, five lined skinks live up to about 6 years, and many die before reaching reproductive maturity. A broadhead skink documented in captivity lived at least 8 years from the point it was caught as a roughly 4 year old adult. That suggests a longer potential lifespan in a stable, well fed captive setting.