Jump to content

The tale of the tail...


sharn

Recommended Posts

Just thought I would share this to see if anyone had heard of anything similar...

We have four blue tongues at my place of work, and upon going to feed them yesterday morning I noticed one of them had 2/3 of his tail bitten off, with a big fleshy wound showing :tears:

In a mad panic I collected it from its cage, thinking the others were at fault, and whilst I rung around all the reptile nuts I know I watched with amazement (and horror), as this bluey turned around, chomped down on his tail, and death rolled like a croc until he had torn off another cm of his tail, before swallowing it!

By this stage I am nearly in tears :oops: and spend the next half an hour fending him off his own tail. After giving it a check over we applied a small amount of pawpaw ointment and bandaged it up with plasters (which he still tried to chomp down on!). He ate within half an hour of this all happening, and is still eating and acting fine. The plasters are working great as his tail is just about the size of a finger tip now :(

Today he is not as interested in chomping his tail, but still tried 3-4 times this morning when his bandages were off to let the wound air. He is still wearing his bandages, and sharing his cage with a smaller friend who has shown no interest at all in his friends plight.

The question remains as to how this all started, we believe stumpy is a boy, and the largest one is too (judging by his belly he must have had at least a little bit of tail in there). Did he have a tustle, got bitten, then tried to remove the issue by biting his own tail, or has someone chomped it right off, and he is following natural instinct to eat flesh?

We have spoken to three reptile experts, and a few vets and they are equally as stumped as to why this happened. We have been told blueys rarely show aggression, however one reptile expert noted all of his lizards have been more aggressive this year? The wound looks to be healing well so I am hoping he will make a full recovery, poor fella!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...