Blue-tongued lizard
Overview
Bluetongue Lizard (mythology)
Bluetongue Lizard is an old man in Australian Aboriginal mythology. He is a trickster and a powerful sorcerer as well. He is responsible for the Warlpiri fire ceremonies because of a myth involving him...
.
Blue-tongued skinks comprise the Australasian genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
, Tiliqua, which contains some of the largest members of the skink
Skink
Skinks are lizards belonging to the family Scincidae. Together with several other lizard families, including Lacertidae , they comprise the superfamily or infraorder Scincomorpha...
family
Family (biology)
In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...
(Scincidae). They are commonly called blue-tongued lizards or simply blue-tongues in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. As suggested by these common names, a prominent characteristic of the genus is a large blue tongue that can be bared as a bluff-warning to potential enemies.
Blue-tongued skinks are closely related to the genera Cyclodomorphus
Cyclodomorphus
Cyclodomorphus is a genus of small to medium-sized skinks . It belongs to the Egernia group which also includes the blue-tongued skinks .-Species:*Cyclodomorphus branchialis...
and Hemisphaeriodon
Hemisphaeriodon
Pink-tongued skinks are the genus Hemisphaeriodon, which contains some of the largest members of the skink family . They are called commonly pink-tongued lizards in Australia, where true lizards do not naturally occur...
.
