Greek Tortoise Tail Dig

[Long Island Greek]

Today after I returned home from work I witnessed my male greek tortoise stick his tail in the cypress mulch substrate of his enclosure and wiggle dig into the substrate with his tail. This is the first time I have ever seen him do this and normally he retracts his tail and keeps it close to his shell. He wasn't making any sounds and other than his tail digging he wasn't really moving much. Is this normal behavior or does anyone know what he was doing?

 

[GBtortoises]

Are you sure he wasn't just urinating or defecating (or trying to)?

 

[Long Island Greek]

Are you sure he wasn't just urinating or defecating (or trying to)?

Yeah just minutes before this I bathed him and he emptied his bowels then.

 

[Starstrucksadie]

My Greek did this too the other day! he wasnt so much digging but burying his tail in his sand, i'd never seen this before. i'm not sure what theyre doing, but you're not alone! xD

 

[Long Island Greek]

My Greek did this too the other day! he wasnt so much digging but burying his tail in his sand, i'd never seen this before. i'm not sure what theyre doing, but you're not alone! xD

thank you for the reassurance, go figure on what they're doing though

 

[biochemnerd808]

Tortoise toilet paper?

My Greek did this too the other day! he wasnt so much digging but burying his tail in his sand, i'd never seen this before. i'm not sure what theyre doing, but you're not alone! xD

thank you for the reassurance, go figure on what they're doing though