Extinct in the Wild
Blue-tailed Skink
Cryptoblepharus egeriae
Blue-tailed Skink, also known commonly as the blue-tailed shinning-skink, the Christmas Island blue-tailed shinning-skink, and the Christmas Island blue-tailed skink, is a lizard in the family Scincidae that was once endemic to Christmas Island.
Appearance
The Christmas Island blue-tailed skink typically grows to a snout-to-vent length (SVL) of 4–5 cm (1.6–2.0 in). It can be identified by its small black body with two yellow stripes running down the skink's back and onto its vibrant blue tail. The bright color of the skink's tail means predators are much more likely to notice the tail than the skink's black body.
Range and habitat
Until the late 1990s, the Christmas Island blue-tailed skink was endemic to Christmas Island and could be found all over the island. It currently exists in captive populations on Christmas Island, at Taronga Zoo, and on a small island (Pulu Blan) in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands where it has been released as part of an assisted colonization trial. Blue-tailed Skink, also known commonly as the blue-tailed shinning-skink, the Christmas Island blue-tailed shinning-skink, and the Christmas Island blue-tailed skink, is a lizard in the family Scincidae that was once endemic to Christmas Island.
The Christmas Island blue-tailed skink was discovered in 1888. It was formerly the most abundant reptile on the island, and occurred in high numbers particularly near the human settlement.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The Christmas Island blue-tailed skink is a forager known as an insectivore. Its diet primarily consists of crickets, beetles, flies, grasshoppers, spiders, and earthworms.
It will occasionally eat some vegetation, though insects remain its primary source of food. Because of its small size, the Christmas Island blue-tailed skink forages for its food on the ground, over exposed rocks and low-lying vegetation, and will generally only eat prey that are slower moving. For the Christmas Island blue-tailed skink, the first breeding season occurs when males and females are approximately one year old.
In crisis
Even so, the Christmas Island blue-tailed skink began to decline sharply outwardly from the human settlement by the early 1990s, that coincided with the introduction of a predatory snake and also followed the introduction of the yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) in the mid-1980s. By 2006, the Christmas Island blue-tailed skink was on the endangered animals list, and by 2010 the Christmas Island blue-tailed skink was extinct in the wild. From 2009 to 2010, Parks Australia and Taronga Zoo started a captive breeding program, that has prevented total extinction of the species.
The threat of extinction is largely attributed to introductions of invasive species, among them a predatory wolf snake and the yellow crazy ant that were unintentionally brought to the island in the 1980s. The Christmas Island blue-tailed skink is now extinct in the wild.
Blue-tailed Skink is Extinct in the Wild on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Blue-tailed Skink, Wikidata item Q3005807. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
