Animal Diaries Archive

Happy Birthday to Blue!

30 December 2005

Yes, our baby blueys are growing up really fast. The Blue-tongue Lizards that you guys get to meet on a daily basis as part of our Wandering Wildlife program have had their second birthday! They were born during the night between the 18th and 19th of December 2003. That's right, they were born, not hatched. Blue-tongues give birth to live young.

Three to five months after mating with Lizzy, our female Flick gave birth to nine beautiful babies. She could have had anywhere up to 25 babies but lucky for her she had just under the average number. When they were born they weighed about 20 grams and were 10cm long. Now after two years they are about 35cm long and weigh just under 500 grams. When they were born they were totally independent and in the wild they would have headed off in their own direction to bask, find food and locate a nice safe place to live. Our blueys could live anywhere up to 20 years.

Flick and Lizzy have since had another litter of six healthy blueys who are now almost one year old and have just started coming out to meet you all. They were also on hand to help celebrate their older siblings' birthday.

So from all the reptile team we sing a very happy birthday to Rylee, JT, Brody, Henry, Yoyo, Louey, Eddie, Pearl and Bindi. And in a few weeks we will do the same for Bronto, Steggy, Rex, Saurus, Mongo and Raptor.