Ojai Sulcata Project, Open House

[Jacqui]

Im sure its a learned action from its elders.

From a type of animal that we say does NOT stay around others of it's kind except to mate??? If these animals roamed in colonies then may be you could use this theory.

BUT...and that's a big but...what if these guys roamed in colonies prior to their numbers being decimated...too far-fetched?

I would think even now they would continue to be living in colonies then. Since they can not roam far, I would also think the colony idea would be bad, because they would destroy in a few short years the range they are on... over grazing it. Plus they will also not only eat plants down to the roots, but pull the roots out and eat them too.

Nothing is too far fetched. I happen to be one of those folks who do think tortoises are more sociable then we currently think.

Sooooo then why did the ones who were wild caught in the past and brought to America for instance, not show this behavior?

 

[Zamric]

maybe it's somthing triggered by the enviroment....

 

[Yvonne G]

I will occasionally toss a large flake of orchard grass hay into Dudley's pen. Dudley was a CB tortoise and is about 21 years old. He walks right through it. Doesn't eat it...doesn't drag it into his "burrow" to store. I don't and have never fed him. He has to eat what grows in his pen, with the exception of the very occasional flake of hay or branch off the mulberry tree. In the winter his bermuda grass goes dormant and I still don't feed him. He eats the dead, dry grass. If the food storage idea were an inherent idea, then Dudley would be the ideal tortoise to use it because for the past 15 years or so, his winters have been very sparse.

 

[Zamric]

Whats a "CB Tortoise?" I'd love to see a pic of him!

 

[DeanS]

Whats a "CB Tortoise?" I'd love to see a pic of him!

Captive Born

 

[dmarcus]

CB is captive born and if you see WC that is wild caught

 

[DeanS]

Im sure its a learned action from its elders.

From a type of animal that we say does NOT stay around others of it's kind except to mate??? If these animals roamed in colonies then may be you could use this theory.

BUT...and that's a big but...what if these guys roamed in colonies prior to their numbers being decimated...too far-fetched?

I would think even now they would continue to be living in colonies then. Since they can not roam far, I would also think the colony idea would be bad, because they would destroy in a few short years the range they are on... over grazing it. Plus they will also not only eat plants down to the roots, but pull the roots out and eat them too.

Nothing is too far fetched. I happen to be one of those folks who do think tortoises are more sociable then we currently think.

Sooooo then why did the ones who were wild caught in the past and brought to America for instance, not show this behavior?

I don't believe Tom covered this yet! But, according to Tomas, there are supposedly only about 50 wild sulcata left in his range...I would presume that means the Mali ssp...I've heard nothing about the Sudan ssp...but they are slaughtered for meat.

And, at 21, Yvonne, it would be safe to assume that Dudley is th offspring of WC (wild caught) parents...Yes?

 

[Zamric]

Thanks! I'm still new enough NOT to know these abriviations... theres a couple of more that I've seen and not recognized but tried (unsuccesfully I might add) to interpet. I'll ask next time!

 

[EricIvins]

Im sure its a learned action from its elders.

From a type of animal that we say does NOT stay around others of it's kind except to mate??? If these animals roamed in colonies then may be you could use this theory.

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The problem with that logic is the fact that alot of people don't give their Tortoises massive amounts of food for them to store like the seasons dictate in Africa.........

Part two would be the fact that the animals may not recognize the food we offer in captivity as "storeable".......It may be a very specific behavior associated with specific types of Vegetation.......

Any sulcata who lives in a well planted range, should mimic this behavior, even if it is not the exact type of food. It should see grass, as grass and atleast make the attempt to try to store it. I do not believe in the name of survival that nature would tell them hey, ignore all but grass CBN, which you have never even saw in your lifetime, and starve rather then trying new types of plants. This just does not seem feasible or rational.

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There are plenty of examples where animals are genetically programmed to do certain behaviors with certain situations and specific things ( as in a specific food in this instance ).........

May not be rational to you as a Human, but it may make total sense to the animals..........


And to anyone who thinks the Pet Trade decimated Wild Sulcatas, needs to take a glance at the Bush Meat trade..........A 100lb Tortoise is worth its weight in gold when it comes to it.......Shell and all.......

 

[dmarcus]

Im sure its a learned action from its elders.

From a type of animal that we say does NOT stay around others of it's kind except to mate??? If these animals roamed in colonies then may be you could use this theory.

---

The problem with that logic is the fact that alot of people don't give their Tortoises massive amounts of food for them to store like the seasons dictate in Africa.........

Part two would be the fact that the animals may not recognize the food we offer in captivity as "storeable".......It may be a very specific behavior associated with specific types of Vegetation.......

Any sulcata who lives in a well planted range, should mimic this behavior, even if it is not the exact type of food. It should see grass, as grass and atleast make the attempt to try to store it. I do not believe in the name of survival that nature would tell them hey, ignore all but grass CBN, which you have never even saw in your lifetime, and starve rather then trying new types of plants. This just does not seem feasible or rational.

---

There are plenty of examples where animals are genetically programmed to do certain behaviors with certain situations and specific things ( as in a specific food in this instance ).........

May not be rational to you as a Human, but it may make total sense to the animals..........


And to anyone who thinks the Pet Trade decimated Wild Sulcatas, needs to take a glance at the Bush Meat trade..........A 100lb Tortoise is worth its weight in gold when it comes to it.......Shell and all.......

---

I did say reduce, not "decimate" I know there are a lot of factors that has come into play with the decline of wild tortoises. I don't know what roll bush meat played in the reduction and I bet there are also other reasons as well.

 

[Tom]

Wow! I missed so many posts. So much to address.

D, Tomas told us the the main reason for population decline is habitat destruction and over-grazing by the human's livestock. He also said that in his country, they are not eaten, but they are collected and kept in the garden as a status symbol and a way to bring in good luck and ward off bad luck. He said that in some countries they do eat them. The pet trade has not been a factor for more than a decade, if it ever was. My best friend worked for an importer/wholesaler back in the days when they were still importing them, and I was in retail for 8 years. I did not see a lot of imported sulcatas relative to most other species.

Z, I think they might be smart enough to "learn" this behavior, but I seriously doubt if they learn it from their elders. This IS just speculation since no one knows the answer. You could be right for all we know.

Jacqui, in all my years I have never seen a captive situation that mimics what happens in the wild over there. There is no "Winter" with its cooler temps and resulting lowered appetite and caloric needs. We don't have a place in this country where we get hot rain for 3-4 months followed by an even hotter dry spell where all the food dries up. Most people here feed their torts or live in areas where there is always food available.

Yvonne, does Dudley have an actual burrow? If he did, and temps stayed warm all year round, and the vegetation around him suddenly sprouted to 2 or 3' high, and he knew that after 3-4 months all this food would disappear and he would have no lawn to chew on, if if if... I wonder what he'd do.

Dean, In AZ Tomas said their are 40 left in the wild NOW, not including his re-introduced ones. In Ojai, I thought he said that during the 2006 census there were 60. I caught this because of the two different numbers at the two different presentations.

 

[BrinnANDTorts]

Here in the US there is nothing like the environment where they are natural from in Africa and in most animals instincts to go into survival mood (like bringing in a whole bunch of greens to survival the extreme dry spell) are kicked in by seasonal and weather changes. It makes sense to me that when they live in a place very different than their homeland that certain instincts will not kick in because nothing triggers them. Just like people who have to lock their Sulcatas up or else they will just go and freeze in the outside winter weather instead of moving to a warmer place because in their natural homeland doesn't ever get that cold so why would they have an instinct to move to warmer places?
It takes the right conditions, weather, and everything for them to probably go into this mood of storing food and I don't think that here in the US that they would even have such conditions or need.

 

[Tom]

Tomas did note that the behavior differences between our captive sulcatas and the wild ones that he knows so well, are HUGE. He said the way sulcatas behave here is nothing like what they do in the wild.

 

[Jacqui]

I would still think just once, an animal in captivity would get enough heat and dryness in some place like Texas, CA, or AZ, to get this response triggered. They don't know that the entire cycle would not be completed like it is in Africa, so the weather at both places does not have to be the same. They would just need the starting triggers, which I would bet are at sometime equal to what we experience over here.

...or even ones kept inside under unnatural conditions.

I just can't believe none of these thousands of captive sulcata has not shown this behavior.

 

[Tom]

Understandable, but when it gets hot here or in AZ, all the grass is already gone. So even if the instinct were triggered, there is no marsh full of grass to gather from. When it gets hot in FL and some parts of Texas, there is still an abundance of food all year long, so no need to hoard.

Also, I think it is safe to say that most captive sulcatas do not live full time in burrows. If they burrow at all (mine don't) most people fill in the burrows during the winter rains here in the states to prevent flooding, collapse or freezing.

I'm just throwing out speculation and guesses here based on what I've seen. I do agree with you that its a pretty big disconnect between wild behavior and captive behavior.

OOh! I thought of something else. Many people, myself included, already line the "burrows" with dry grass hay. Mine all sleep on a thick bed of bermuda hay.

Another something else: Everyone I know feeds their babies everyday for months or years, until they move outside when they et big enough. Not too many hatchlings just live outside from hatching to adulthood with out being indoors and catered to for most of the year. Maybe their familiarity with people and their pattern of being fed in abundance on little trays their whole life is enough to counteract this natural instinct.

I wonder if we would see this in a sulcata that was raised from a hatchling in an overgrown, large outdoor enclosure in a tropical area and never (or seldom) touched by human hands.

 

[DeanS]

Tom...just to make my points clearer...Tomas said they were not being eaten in his country, but the sulcatas in the Sudan were (are?) being hunted. In fact, the sulcata in Senegal are quite revered and are being removed from the wild to be kept as pets locally....apparently, it's good luck to have one around...until he destroys your home

Also, I remember you mentioning the remaining 60 on your way back from AZ, and Tomas mentioning 40 in Ojai...so I averaged it out...because I didn't know there was a time difference.

 

[Jacqui]

Understandable, but when it gets hot here or in AZ, all the grass is already gone. So even if the instinct were triggered, there is no marsh full of grass to gather from. When it gets hot in FL and some parts of Texas, there is still an abundance of food all year long, so no need to hoard.

Also, I think it is safe to say that most captive sulcatas do not live full time in burrows. If they burrow at all (mine don't) most people fill in the burrows during the winter rains here in the states to prevent flooding, collapse or freezing.

I'm just throwing out speculation and guesses here based on what I've seen. I do agree with you that its a pretty big disconnect between wild behavior and captive behavior.

OOh! I thought of something else. Many people, myself included, already line the "burrows" with dry grass hay. Mine all sleep on a thick bed of bermuda hay.

Another something else: Everyone I know feeds their babies everyday for months or years, until they move outside when they et big enough. Not too many hatchlings just live outside from hatching to adulthood with out being indoors and catered to for most of the year. Maybe their familiarity with people and their pattern of being fed in abundance on little trays their whole life is enough to counteract this natural instinct.

I wonder if we would see this in a sulcata that was raised from a hatchling in an overgrown, large outdoor enclosure in a tropical area and never (or seldom) touched by human hands.

I would think even if the grass growing in there enclosure was gone, they would then take the grass, hay, greens whatever they were being given or had in their enclosures and use those instead. If in their minds, survival depends upon this, they would be scraping up every bit of food they could.

In the Florida scene you made, the tortoise would not know there was no need to hoard, so he would or should hoard.

Natural instinct should not leave an animal that quickly either, not when it is tied in to survival.

 

[DeanS]

Both of you make excellent points. However, tortoises in the wild would be 'collecting' tall grasses. That is NEVER an option in captivity, because they keep it well-groomed...i.e. they eat everything in sight! And of course, we, their caregivers, do all we can to make their environment 'pretty' During that stretch from April - August, I still have to mow because they don't eat fast enough to keep up

 

[Yvonne G]

But what about the flake of grass hay I give Dudley every so often. He pays no attention to it, even though his feeding is seasonal, and he has to eat the dead/dormant grass during the winter.

 

[DeanS]

But what about the flake of grass hay I give Dudley every so often. He pays no attention to it, even though his feeding is seasonal, and he has to eat the dead/dormant grass during the winter.

Yeah! But he gets in it and makes a mess of it...right? Same difference. I don't think they move it to their burrows just to eat it.