Bullying

[klinej50]

How do you know if your tortoise is bullying? My smaller tortoise seems to climb on the bigger one and try to push him away. They are only babies still.

 

[kimber_lee_314]

As long as they aren't hurting each other, stressing each other, or one isn't keeping the other from eating, I wouldn't call it bullying.

 

[Yvonne G]

Sometimes you see outward signs, like fighting, or mounting...but often times it is what I call mental bullying. You can usually see this because one of the tortoises stays hidden all the time and doesn't grow as fast as the other one.

 

[Tom]

Just the presence of another tortoise in a pair situation can be intimidating and cause stress. It doesn't even have to "do" anything. Its funny to me. Chameleon keepers all know this and totally understand all the implications. The need for isolation, the need for sight barriers, etc. Chameleons show their displeasure/stress with their posture, behavior, and color, but our tortoises with their rigid shells and their two dimensional environments (meaning they don't normally climb), just don't "show" their stress in a way easily seen by people.

If a tortoise is actually pursuing, pushing, ramming, biting, sniffing, driving it away from the food, or mounting another tortoise then you have obvious overt signs of actual aggression. But just sharing an enclosure with a single other tortoise can be very stressful in itself even with no overt aggression. You can still have bullying or intimidation in group tortoise settings, but it tends to be much less of an issue for a variety of reason.

Pairs are just generally not a good idea with most of the commonly kept species.

 

[klinej50]

I have two leopard and I read it was okay for that species to be housed together. Plus they do have a large inside and outside enclosure so they have plenty of time to be separated. Should I divided their enclosure in half then?

 

[Tom]

I would. Or get one or two more.

Leopards are generally less combative than some other species, but as you are seeing, they are still territorial sometimes.

 

[ascott]

If a tortoise is actually pursuing, pushing, ramming, biting, sniffing, driving it away from the food, or mounting another tortoise then you have obvious overt signs of actual aggression. But just sharing an enclosure with a single other tortoise can be very stressful in itself even with no overt aggression.

Perfect.

 

[GBtortoises]

How do you know if your tortoise is bullying? My smaller tortoise seems to climb on the bigger one and try to push him away. They are only babies still.

Tortoises don't actually "bully" each other. That is a recent term coined for human action that involves emotional and physical intimidation primarily for attention. Tortoises do not operate on emotion or for attention. They are driven by instinct for survival of the species. Tortoises show domination over each other for survival purpose, not for emotional attention. This is very clear in male domination of his territory. A male will fight off other males for the right to breed with any females that wander into his territory. He will also usually pursue those females relentlessly until he either copulates with female or he pursues her far enough into another males territory wherein a fight may result between the original male is chased back into his original territory, or dominates the second male and chases him off.
But again, "bullying" does not accurately apply to tortoise nature and actions.

The fact that one of your tortoises is climbing over the other and pushing it out of the way is perfectly normal. Tortoises, young ones in particular, have a generally disregard for small obstacles regardless of whether it is another tortoise or not. They will often simply try to climb over or go through an obstacle rather than going around. There is nothing wrong with that, but if the two tortoises vary greatly in size the smaller one can easily get tossed around alot by the larger one. It's not on purpose, it's not due to "bullying" or domination (at a young age), it's simply what tortoises do when kept together in close quarters. It's always better to provide as large an area as possible that is easy for them to manuneuver around in to avoid as much congestion as possible.

 

[Baoh]

How do you know if your tortoise is bullying? My smaller tortoise seems to climb on the bigger one and try to push him away. They are only babies still.

Tortoises don't actually "bully" each other. That is a recent term coined for human action that involves emotional and physical intimidation primarily for attention. Tortoises do not operate on emotion or for attention. They are driven by instinct for survival of the species. Tortoises show domination over each other for survival purpose, not for emotional attention. This is very clear in male domination of his territory. A male will fight off other males for the right to breed with any females that wander into his territory. He will also usually pursue those females relentlessly until he either copulates with female or he pursues her far enough into another males territory wherein a fight may result between the original male is chased back into his original territory, or dominates the second male and chases him off.
But again, "bullying" does not accurately apply to tortoise nature and actions.

The fact that one of your tortoises is climbing over the other and pushing it out of the way is perfectly normal. Tortoises, young ones in particular, have a generally disregard for small obstacles regardless of whether it is another tortoise or not. They will often simply try to climb over or go through an obstacle rather than going around. There is nothing wrong with that, but if the two tortoises vary greatly in size the smaller one can easily get tossed around alot by the larger one. It's not on purpose, it's not due to "bullying" or domination (at a young age), it's simply what tortoises do when kept together in close quarters. It's always better to provide as large an area as possible that is easy for them to manuneuver around in to avoid as much congestion as possible.

Exactly. Excellent post.

 

[klinej50]

Thanks for all the info guys it is really helpful!