Tortoise: Animal behaviour and problems.

      General information

      Tortoise and turtles are reptiles like for instance the serpent.       Reptiles are poikilotherm animals. In order to reach the right       body temperature, they have to warm up in the sun or in warm       water. Only then their body functions can work completely.       Tortoises and turtles are wild animals. They lay eggs like       birds and wear a carapace to protect them from all sorts of       ennemies. Tortoises are herbivores, turtles can be herbivores       or carnivores.

      Tortoises and turtles are wild animals. They lay eggs like                                                                                        birds and wear a carapace to protect them from all sorts of ennemies. Tortoises are herbivores, turtles can be herbivores or carnivores.

We differentiate neck-pond turtles from side-neck turtles. Neck-pond turtles fold their neck into the shell, side-neck turtles flip their head sideways. The smallest turtles have the size of approximately a palm of the hand and weigh 120 g, the biggest reach a length of 1,2 m and weigh 280 kg. They can live up to 100 years.

Never keep turtles! An enclosure for keeping turtles in ways appropriate to their species can never be a biologically intact ecological system. It is artificially created for animals that are not indigenous in our latitudes. Moreover, the animals need sun, particularly morning sun, in order to be able to warm up. And if they get good care, they can reach an age of 100 years. Who can take responsibility for that? Nobody!

Social behaviour

Tortoises and turtles are loners. They are not interested at all in a sociable family life. This absolutely antisocial basic attitude already starts with the reproduction. The female lays her eggs in the egg pit. And that was it. She neither takes care of the brood (let the sun brood!) nor looks after the freshly hatched cubs at a later stage. These have to battle their way through time all by themselves! What remains to be done? Mating.

Behavioural disturbances

If they are kept in ways appropriate to their species, behaviour disorder has hardly to be feared with these robust animals. For the most part, disruptive factors are at stake which the pet owner can handle himself. Examples: Not enough places to lay eggs lead to egg bound of the females. Or, the soil is not deep enough and is too hard. Also, unruly males who continuously pesture the females are a disruptive element before oviposition. During this phase, the animals have to be separated. Or rival fights betweeen males, which can lead to bite wounds, have to be avoided. Here again separation of the sexes (also out of sight) is necessary. Or wrong feeding, no warm or cold shelter place at cold spell, no safe enclosure that guarantees that the animals cannot escape. All this creates difficulties.

Man-Animal communication

Tortoises and turtles are inquisitive animals. They know their surroundings perfectly well and do not like it if something gets changed. A tortoise or a turtle does not play like a cat or a dog. He is a loner who would like to have his peace and quiet. The one thing we can do is to talk calmly with these animals or to give them some green roughage. The tortoise and the turtle can neither be trained nor can he be changed one way or the other because he is a real wild animal. The communication between the human being and the tortoise or the turtle is, therefore, limited to an extremely modest repertoire of only a few interactions.

Animals "talk" to their fellow species by body posture, position of the tail, facial expression, vocalization and many more. If the human being has the position of companion and substiute for fellow species, then he must try to make up a little bit for the big deficit. The easiest way to do this is to talk calmly to his pets. Just the way he would speak with other human beings. Animals are extremely capable of learning and understand very quickly what words, the tone of voice and gestures want to say.

Undesirable behaviour

A most undesired thing from the pet owner's point of view is the escaping from the enclosure which is the most frequent bad habit of these animals. Especially in the corners of the fencing they never grow tired of testing over and over again the limits of their climbing talents because there might be some tempting dandelion to eat on the other side of the fence. Fences should at least reach a height of 40 cm. Halfs of pipes, concrete slabs, wooden palisades are better than cut off wire netting.

Mood barometer

The good or bad mood of archaic wild animals like the turtle and the tortoise, who exist in over 200 species, has up to now not yet been profoundly analyzed. Nevertheless, every pet owner who has perhaps already spent time with his pet for decades, knows how to interpret the different signals of the turtle or the tortoise. So there are for instance species like big-headed turtles who get angry very quickly and knock the adversary with a wide-open mouth and at the same time constantly flash with the white nictitating membran of the eyes. Or the Pennsylvanian side-necked mud turtle who is very vicious and therefore unpopular. Here in the picture a turtle ready to bite the finger of the person who looks after him, maybe just fort he reason because turtles also eat meat and animals.

Psychology of animals

What does he think, this armoured reptile with his somewhat eerie eyes? The more we know about turtles and tortoises or at least about the species we have here around, the more we have a chance to gain an insight into the psychology of these creatures. The ignorance in the field of turtles and tortoises is considerable, almost alarmingly high, particularly because more and more exotic species turn up on the market and nobody knows any details. That is why the suffering here as a result of keeping these animals in ways not appropriate to their species is more severe than elsewhere.