I am pretty sure this article was shared on the forum at some point, but I just wanted to draw some attention to it now as some of us are preparing our outdoor pens for the warmer weather around the corner. It looks like this article was written in 2001, but the date is really irrelevant given the context of the article about diet.
Basically it was a study conducted in Northern Tanzania and identifies feeding habits of leopard tortoises in the wild and sighting frequency based on man hours.
I first read this a year ago, and started to include some of the plants identified in the article in our outdoor pens. I am excited this year now that the plants have grown a little to see how well they do with a more "natural" diet.
This is going to relate more to the babcocki leopards more-so than the South African variety, but there are some references to SA-leopard diets.
I was surprised at the percentage of succulents the wild East African leopard tortoises consume as compared to grasses which most books and articles state their natural diet mainly consists of. Anyone who has a both babcocki and pardalis leopards might have observed that the babcocki are less likely to eat grass than the pardalis...I think this article answers why that is.
If anything, it is an interesting read and I think anyone with interest in leopard tortoises would find this information valuable.
http://africantortoise.com/AfJEcoPardalis2001-1.pdf
Basically it was a study conducted in Northern Tanzania and identifies feeding habits of leopard tortoises in the wild and sighting frequency based on man hours.
I first read this a year ago, and started to include some of the plants identified in the article in our outdoor pens. I am excited this year now that the plants have grown a little to see how well they do with a more "natural" diet.
This is going to relate more to the babcocki leopards more-so than the South African variety, but there are some references to SA-leopard diets.
I was surprised at the percentage of succulents the wild East African leopard tortoises consume as compared to grasses which most books and articles state their natural diet mainly consists of. Anyone who has a both babcocki and pardalis leopards might have observed that the babcocki are less likely to eat grass than the pardalis...I think this article answers why that is.
If anything, it is an interesting read and I think anyone with interest in leopard tortoises would find this information valuable.
http://africantortoise.com/AfJEcoPardalis2001-1.pdf