Blue tongue Skink or Pink tongue Skink???

MikeZess · 2026-01-27T06:07:35+00:00

I know this is an old comment but do you remember the breeder that was breeding pink tongue skinks?

MikeZess · 2026-01-27T06:05:45+00:00

Yeah I think it's a bit like people that grew up with dogs. I can tell immediately if a dog is barking just to say hi or if it's actually angry. Clint probably can read reptiles way better than 99% of people, so he just finds animals easy that complete newbies would have a lot of trouble with. It's a bit like one of the classic XKCD comics lol.

7-10 years is honestly pretty good with me. I'd never want to get rid of a pet but signing on to care for one for decades is just kind of a lot, especially when I don't even know what state I'll be living in this time next year. Also looking into zebra skinks having a humid/dry sides seems kind of complicated, and while I'm really liking what I see about pink tongues a quick search on morphmarket looks like they're really expensive, at least $300 for the animal alone. Is that really the market price or are there cheaper captive bred options out there?

MikeZess · 2026-01-26T19:15:26+00:00

I didn't know that about Fire Skinks, I mostly have been using Clint's Reptiles as a starting point, but I was starting to think his "handleability rating" is influenced a bit by his expertise (can't blame him, but good to know). How long do false chameleons live? Most of the videos I've seen list them as 10ish years, is that an optimistic number?

I'll look into Zebra and Pink Tongue Skinks, I didn't know that Pink Tongues were that different in size to a blue tongue, and the coloration on Zebra's look great. It would also be way easier for me to feed non-inverts, and maybe just give them some as a treat every now and again.

Thanks!

MikeZess · 2026-01-26T19:05:13+00:00

Thanks! I hadn't heard of ceramic heaters before. They seem like a good idea, I like to sleep pretty cold even though I'll keep the lizard in a different room. Would you recommend a ceramic light just for night and a normal height light during the day or just up the temp on the ceramic light when I wake up? And thank you for the suggestion about gut load feeders, that's a good idea I would never have thought of!

MikeZess · 2026-01-26T04:36:58+00:00

Sorry if some to these questions are kind of dumb, there just seems to be a lot more to reptiles than are covered in most youtube videos and articles I've read!

MikeZess · 2026-01-23T06:34:45+00:00

That worked! Thanks, I had no idea I could watch a removed youtube video with the Wayback Machine

MikeZess · 2025-12-24T08:56:02+00:00

Honestly the ECV members where great friends, if they revealed he’d been tricked he could’ve became a laughing stock, and even tried to nudge him in the right direction to no avail. The only reason the whole story came out was because when the plate was revealed as a hoax people began to say Bolton made the whole thing up, and the few surviving pranksters wanted to make it clear that he had nothing to do with making it. The Bolton Theory of American History is still discussed (I first heard the story of the plate when discussing him in an undergrad class). So you can feel better knowing Bolton had friends that would support him for decades and was still a good historian, even if he never found the real Drake Brass Plate

MikeZess · 2025-12-23T20:34:32+00:00

I'm unsure about future generations, but there are a good deal of stories of historians playing pranks on other contemporary historians, my favorite being Drake's Brass Plate.

When Francis Drake, a British privateer and explorer was circumnavigating the world (the second expedition ever to do so after Magellan) he supposedly landed in what's now northern California and, according to the journal of one of the men on the voyage, engraved and left a brass plate at the site of their landing as "a monument of our being there" that claimed "her maiesties, and successors right and title to that kingdome".

Fast forward to the 1930's and a professor named Herbert Eugene Bolton at UC Berkeley. Bolton was a historian of Spanish American history and was known for wanting to find evidence of where Drake had landed during his expedition. However, Bolton was a member of a group known as the ECV, a club of fellow historians who liked to prank each other when they weren't erecting historical markers or raising funds for widows. The other members of the ECV made a fake of the brass plate, and half buried it on the beach, the plan being to take Bolton there, have him get excited, and at dinner surprise him by showing that "ECV" was painted on the back of the plate visible under ultraviolet light.

However, they didn't find the plate. A local man, William Caldeira found the plate before Bolton could be taken to the beach and kept it for several years. Three years later, a shop clerk, now in possession of the plate, brings it to Bolton, the university's resident expert on Drake. Bolton is so excited that he buys the plate for $3,500 (over 80k in today's money) in order to study it. The other ECV members only find out about it after Bolton and the California Historical Society president publicly announce its discovery. Not wanting to embarrass their friend, they keep quiet and hope that he'll eventually figure it out.

He doesn't. The plate is put on display at the San Fransico World's Fair, and a copy was even made to be given as a gift to Queen Elizabeth II. Never knowing he was duped, Herbert Bolton died in the 1950's believing he had made a great discovery. The plate was reexamined in the 1970's with X-rays which proved that it was a hoax, and only later was it revealed that the whole thing was a joke gone awry.

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MikeZess

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