Dinosaur_Owner
New Member
Hello I was wandering if anyone else has considered the possibility that the common red foot tortoise is actually a naturally occurring hybrid between yellow foots and cherry heads. I looked up the naturally ranges of all three tortoises. It looks as though yellow foots are located in northern countries of south america. Cherry heads are mostly isolated in Brazil but the red foot tortoises range over laps both the cherry head and the yellow foot. Also you can look at the sizes of all three tortoises generally speaking yellow foots are the largest followed by red foots and then followed by the smaller cherry heads. Another thing to mention is the coloration. As red foots age they get yellow heads like the Yellow foots, but retain red feet like the cherry heads who are red all over. So I hypothesize that the red foot tortoise is really a naturally occurring composite creature that sprang from the shared genetics of yellow foots and cherry heads. I'm not saying the modern red foot genome is a 50/50 split between the two species but I do believe the regular red foots are the byproduct of these two species that then went on to genetically stabilize and form the composite species we know today. Does anyone have any thoughts on the topic?