help me, Berger's cape tortoise??

russian/sulcata/tortoise

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So i was looking at tortoises and i came across the name i have never heard of "Berger's cape tortoise". can someone tell me about this species? is it the same species as the speckled cape tortoise or the parrot beaked tortoise? does it have subspecies? :(
 

HLogic

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Welcome. Sunlight ain't all it seems! I'd trade places with you in a moment. :) The web is kinda full of information on Bergers. (NAMA PADLOPER) (HOMOPUS SOLUS) It is illegal in the pet trade. From Africa, Namibia.

Why are they illegal? They aren't on the ESA list (nor are any other Homopus). Albeit protected in their native range, that does not make them illegal elsewhere necessarily.
 

turtlemanfla88

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Awesome link.I got a question for you over in Europe does most of the Zoos work with mammals as their main focus compared to reptiles and Amphibians?. It is getting better in the United States ,but the general public in my opinion likes cute and furry compared to scales.
 

juli11

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Awesome link.I got a question for you over in Europe does most of the Zoos work with mammals as their main focus compared to reptiles and Amphibians?. It is getting better in the United States ,but the general public in my opinion likes cute and furry compared to scales.

Yes I love this site. It's the studbook of homopus here in Europe (Netherlands). I also got a male H. signatus signatus from them. Really polite and friendly guys.
To your question. For sure most of our zoos has their main priority on mammals because the most people come to the zoo to see for example an interesting elephant than a boring turtle or lizard. But you're right the most of our zoos has an aquarium with reptiles and amphibians. Also most of the zoos are involved in breeding projects. Maybe a zoo in münster has the biggest breeding project of coura. They breed all types of them without flavo and ambo. Pretty interesting I hope I can visit it in the next months.
 

turtlemanfla88

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Please let us know when you visit. I know the Czek republic does a lot with reptiles in general.
 

Kapidolo Farms

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Wow, H. solus has been a mystery Homopus for many years, rumored to be in a few places, kept secret by some herpetologists until they had the time and available resources to properly describe them as a new species. There are potentially a few other 'unknown' Homopus out there.

Illegal in the pet trade is an accurate description. All tortoises are CITES II, yeah, any argument there? So that would mean for any tortoise not in its country of origin to needing a CITES export document. I'm pretty sure that Namibia has not ever, even once issued one for pets, so by default they are all illegal animals outside of Namibia. Even if they had been sought prior to their current taxonomic designation, and later sorted out 'hey these are really H, solus' they'd still be illegal as Namibia has not issued the permit under any alternate CITES export doc. Further back in time before CITES, yeah, I don't believe you.

There are few people who have found them in the wild, not many, proverbial needle in a haystack. They were described in 2007, but the South African herpetologist who described them was fairly well aware of them for several years and documented them to a site exclusively in Namibia. There is one maybe two more Homopus in the same general also currently under review for species status.
 

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