red pepper, tomato, anything red

[Oogway]

Why does my tortoise go absolutely mental whenever he sees any food that is red? I don't feed my tortoise red pepper very often, but since it goes crazy about it, she gets a little about once a week.

I'd like to know if there is anything about red foods that is good for a tortoise

 

[Tom]

In the wild red represents seasonally available treats like fruit and flowers. Yellow and orange often elicit a similar response. Nothing nutritionally amazing about the color red. I think it's more like finding candy or ice cream for a human.

 

[Guggie]

That's one of the reasons I like the Marion red sticks. Mix it in with their food and instant yummm!

 

[JoesMum]

Joe tried to eat red circles printed on a newspaper last year!

 

[EKLC]

From an evolutionary perspective, it might be red/orange indicating the presence of beta carotene, triggering the tort to take full advantage of the vitamin A source.

 

[ascott]

I agree with Evan on his theory as well....never thought about it that way but makes sense...

And bell pepper is a fav of a couple of the CDTs here ....the RFs don't seem to be as turned on by it yet...lol

 

[Oogway]

From an evolutionary perspective, it might be red/orange indicating the presence of beta carotene, triggering the tort to take full advantage of the vitamin A source.

Very interesting!!!

First time i saw my tortoise react this way to red, she was pushing a red block of lego round the room

 

[ascott]

I have one of the CDTs here that I refer to as the old man....poor thing has near no vision in one eye and I believe his vision is not bang on in the other....he came to me that way....so anyways back to my story..I use to work at a park and he use to stay at the park and he resided in my office with his own door to his own patio...well one day I was working at my desk so he strolled on in and sat down on my boot and then jumped up and booked over to a bookshelf and on the bottom shelf I had a book that had bright yellow on it...so he proceeded to try to eat the book ...after a few minutes I could not watch him any longer..so moved book to top shelf and went out fetched him some dandelion flowers...so he chowed the pile down then went and laid back outside...so actually all his work got him some yummy yellow dandelion flowers after all....lol...

 

[Madkins007]

It would be really interesting to see the world through a tort's eyes. They have a different arrangement of cones and rods than our eyes do, so reds may really blare out at them- even more so than it does for us.

 

[Oogway]

I actually have a youtube video i made a while ago, where Oogway eats bell pepper. And around 00:31 you can see how he "runs" towards it

I'm Reddy, Oogway eating

Getting some really interesting replies, and loving the tort stories