Male or female question...

[Chizbad]

I’m aware it takes several years for a young tort to show their gender. My question, many people seem to think that they can still tell at a young age and claim their shell won’t change “that much”, so how much can ones shell change while growing?

 

[Yvonne G]

It has always been a wonder to me how a hard shell can change almost overnight from looking one way to looking another. A young tortoise that looks female, has all the shell characteristics of a female and yet you look again next week and it's definitely a male. How can that happen to a hard shell?

I think mainly what those people you refer to are going by is the length of the tail and the position of the cloaca on the tail. When the tortoise is bigger, you can tell by the gular and the shape of the anal scutes. But when they're young they all look female.

 

[Chizbad]

It has always been a wonder to me how a hard shell can change almost overnight from looking one way to looking another. A young tortoise that looks female, has all the shell characteristics of a female and yet you look again next week and it's definitely a male. How can that happen to a hard shell?

I think mainly what those people you refer to are going by is the length of the tail and the position of the cloaca on the tail. When the tortoise is bigger, you can tell by the gular and the shape of the anal scutes. But when they're young they all look female.

Thanks for the response, and no I have somebody arguing me that a young torts shell, specifically the pointy parts on the bottom backside (lol, you’ll have to help me with terminology) won’t change much as they grow and doesn’t understand why people can’t sex them at an early age :/... oh oh oh because their vet told them so lol. Vets [emoji849]

 

[Yvonne G]

Those pointy parts on the bottom backside are called the anal scutes. The usually point outward on males and either straight back or inward on females. And yes, they DO change.

 

[Tom]

Thanks for the response, and no I have somebody arguing me that a young torts shell, specifically the pointy parts on the bottom backside (lol, you’ll have to help me with terminology) won’t change much as they grow and doesn’t understand why people can’t sex them at an early age :/... oh oh oh because their vet told them so lol. Vets [emoji849]

Anal scutes in babies and juveniles look fairly similar on both males and females.

Once they reach maturity and the hormones kick in, the male anal scute grow out and form a wide open "V" shape. The female's anal scute form a "U" shape. Like this:



Adult males of this species also get very concave on the plastron, in contrast to babies, juveniles and adult females which are all very flat on bottom.

And finally, most mature males will also grow longer and more developed gular scutes which are much larger and more pronounced than a females or juvenile's gular scutes.

 

[Chizbad]

Anal scutes in babies and juveniles look fairly similar on both males and females.

Once they reach maturity and the hormones kick in, the male anal scute grow out and form a wide open "V" shape. The female's anal scute form a "U" shape. Like this:
View attachment 224994
View attachment 224995

Adult males of this species also get very concave on the plastron, in contrast to babies, juveniles and adult females which are all very flat on bottom.

And finally, most mature males will also grow longer and more developed gular scutes which are much larger and more pronounced than a females or juvenile's gular scutes.

Thanks again Tom! The person I was speaking with this morning was extremely confident that a very young torts anal scutes would not change as it got older and could not make her believe that they will change as it grows. She was almost bashing the fact that people say you can’t tell between male/female

 

[Baoh]

They can change dramatically with the onset of sexual maturity.

If you incubate at the razor's edge of each of the two extremes, you will often see an early tell. The true TSMs will have often have wide-set anal scutes. The true TSFs will often have narrow-set anal scutes. Right out of the egg. A part of the problem here is that people have been groomed by dishonest sellers and the people who repeat their dishonest tales. My partnership has sold a bunch of wholesale specialty hatchlings to retailers and full information is provided. The batches are unsexed and sold very explicitly as unsexed. It has yet to be the case that a reseller of these specialty hatchlings has not labeled them as "temp-sexed females" when reselling them, which is a real shame. Most of the so-called "TSFs" out there are not TSFs at all. You will even have people saying 85 gives a female-leaning result in a species that is known to require an 87 threshhold just to hit 50/50 male/female. Unlike forest species which have more "forgiveness" at medium temperatures when it comes to producing females in a mix.

There is even a seller who will manipulate the parameters during TSD to produce almost exclusively males while manipulating the first and third trimesters to have those TSMs appear to be strongly female. These animals, due to that manipulation, tend to also "bloom" as males later than normal (looking quite female at 12-14" when you would normally be able to see masculine development before that point; my male sulcatas are developed and mounting by then and look every bit a male) and tend to be less enthusiastic and less effective at breeding once they do mature (possible with some hypogonadism going on).

If a person wants a young tortoise to be this sex or that sex, the person either needs to find an honest breeder who also knows what he/she is doing (many people are not skilled at accurate incubation) or the person needs to incubate the eggs himself/herself.

Many people you may encounter online will want an animal's sex to go a certain way and they start calling it that sex and driving their belief in that direction. Unless there are obvious signs to me, I let them go with their belief without being an interruption to it. It is not a contest about who is correct, so I live and let live. Self-delusions seem to help average people get through another day.