# ivory sulcata or nomal?



## Grey Lee (Mar 8, 2017)

Hello everyone, does anyone know how to distinguish ivory and normal sulcata ? I got a baby sulcata and I wonder is it a ivory or normal one. Please let me know what you all think!


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## SarahChelonoidis (Mar 8, 2017)

Hopefully you didn't pay ivory prices for that sulcata, as it looks normal to me (although beautiful). Ivory is a branding for leucistic sulcata - they need two copies of a defective gene responsible for melanin production. It's a very rare mutation, so the babies aren't common. You aren't going to accidentally buy one. They're also quite striking. While yours has a lovely pale shell, it has fairly normal looking amounts of pigment in the face and legs. Look at examples of ivories to see the difference http://tortugavilla.com/IvorySulcatas.html

Edit: looking at your profile picture photo, I'd actually say that looks like a leucistic sulcata. More photos of the face and legs? Is that the same animal?


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## Grey Lee (Mar 8, 2017)

SarahChelonoidis said:


> Hopefully you didn't pay ivory prices for that sulcata, as it looks normal to me (although beautiful). Ivory is a branding for leucistic sulcata - they need two copies of a defective gene responsible for melanin production. It's a very rare mutation, so the babies aren't common. You aren't going to accidentally buy one. They're also quite striking. While yours has a lovely pale shell, it has fairly normal looking amounts of pigment in the face and legs. Look at examples of ivories to see the difference http://tortugavilla.com/IvorySulcatas.html
> 
> Edit: looking at your profile picture photo, of actually say that looks more like a potentially leucistic sulcata. More photos of the face and legs?



I got the profile picture from this site http://www.ivorytortoise.com/photo_gallery/ivory.php

This is a "Ivory Tortoise Gallery" and I noticed some ivory sulcata in the photo present a light brown grow line on the shell just like my baby sulcata, so i'm not sure whether mine is an ivory.


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## SarahChelonoidis (Mar 8, 2017)

Ah, that's one of Richard Fife's animals. Your profile picture is an ivory. The tortoise you uploaded photos of is not (I'm assuming it didn't come from Richard Fife).


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## Grey Lee (Mar 8, 2017)

SarahChelonoidis said:


> Ah, that's one of Richard Fife's animals. Your profile picture is an ivory. The tortoise you uploaded photos of is not (I'm assuming it didn't come from Richard Fife).


Ok, I know. Im a little upset because I paid about $700 for this little guy. But It do look different with other normal baby sulcata, what do you think?


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## SarahChelonoidis (Mar 8, 2017)

I do think it has beautiful colouring, not typical. Who did you buy it from?

If you clean the face and legs up some, does some of the dark colouring wash off? I was assuming most of that was pigment, but maybe it's dirty. @DeanS's ivory babies had their legs and face darken up quite a bit, actually http://www.tortoiseforum.org/thread...s-ultra-photo-heavy.92212/page-10#post-897971

What does someone like @Baoh or @DeanS think of this guy?


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## Grey Lee (Mar 8, 2017)

SarahChelonoidis said:


> I do think it has beautiful colouring, not typical. Who did you buy it from?
> 
> If you clean the face and legs up some, does some of the dark colouring wash off? I was assuming most of that was pigment, but maybe it's dirty. @DeanS's ivory babies had their legs and face darken up quite a bit, actually http://www.tortoiseforum.org/thread...s-ultra-photo-heavy.92212/page-10#post-897971
> 
> What does someone like @Baoh or @DeanS think of this guy?



I'm in China and I buy it from a guy on internet. These CITES animals are illegal here, the government don't care whether these individuals captive breeding or not, they are deemed to be caught from wild.


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## Grey Lee (Mar 8, 2017)

I contact with the businessman who sold this sulcata to me，he said sulcata have 3 morph variations:
1.albino
2.ivory
3.some between ivory and normal one， which present a lignt brown grow line on shell (a sort of "HET"?). He called this kind of sulcata "yellowing", and he told me that my little guy belongs to this class...

By the way, a true ivory sulcata in China can be sold for about $2000 in black market


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## SarahChelonoidis (Mar 9, 2017)

I actually thought hets for ivory looked normal, but it's interesting that he's getting these beautiful yellow animals as hets.


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## Tidgy's Dad (Mar 16, 2017)

It's a beautiful tortoise.


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