Pancake Tortoise sub-speices

[Gabriel Mattei]

Hey,

I am new to this forum. I live in Thailand and I have more than 200 pancake tortoises, they mostly came as rescues caught from the smuggling of the illegal wildlife trade in Thailand. I have got great success breeding them in captivity, I don't even have to incubate the eggs! Anyways, i went to a new vet because one of my new pancake tortoise had MBD. He said that they were different subspecies of pancake tortoises but i have never heard of subspecies in the Malacpchersus tonieri family, does anybody know if this is true or not? If you do csn you please tell me the name of the different subspecies.

Thank you ,

 

[african cake queen]

My tortoise doctor said yes. I have Big cakes. The zoo here said they could take blood sample to what what region they came from. I don't need to know ,but I do think the answer is yes.

 

[mike taylor]

I have no idea . But 200 cakes holy cow ! We need some pictures ! Hahaha

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi, Gabriel, and welcome to the forum!

I think rather than actual sub-species, what there is is different locations they come from. Same with the leopard tortoises and the Redfooted tortoises.

Let's send a shout-out to @Will

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

Pancakes, Malacochersus, is a one species genus. They have been assigned to other genera, and other species may have been assigned to this genus in the past. However there are no recognized subspecies in current taxonomic lists which are reviewed and updated annually. That's not to say there are not significant differences between populations. It seems based on my limited awareness of animals and their origin, that with northern groups the males are larger than females, southern groups males are smaller. It seems some populations, or perhaps even individuals, lay eggs that best perform with a diapause while others it seems to make no difference. But this can be an intrapopulation reproduction strategy as has been seen with other species of chelonians.

Their range may have been artificially extended so as to allow for export from countries where they do not actually reside, or it could actually be they have a larger north/south distribution than had been thought as recently as 10-15 years ago.

While still a CITES Appendix II animal, their importation to the USA has been spotty as USFWS has found false export documents from actual range states, so with an MOU have periodically stopped their importation to the USA.

I have not re-looked up this information since sometime in 2012, so some of the 'facts' may not be right. I do think they are still Appendix II and there is but one species in the genus, no recognized subspecies. If you find this to be in error, please include a viable link to updated information.