Squiggly Lines and Pyramiding

[Edna]

Additonally, the examples in this thread have been on light colored tortoises, sulcatas, a greek and a russian. I haven't heard anyone else make this observation yet, so I thought I would point it out.

My Hermann, Torty, is just as squiggly as he can be, visible full time, even after soaking, even after a long night sleeping in warm wet stbstrate. True, the squiggles are only visible in the light colored portions of his shell, but I think the same phenomenon is present all over his shell and is merely obscured in the dark areas. One thing that all these squiggled torts seem to have in common is a period of rapid growth. Edna

 

[dmmj]

Who knew tortoises could wrinkle?

 

[PeanutbuttER]

Additonally, the examples in this thread have been on light colored tortoises, sulcatas, a greek and a russian. I haven't heard anyone else make this observation yet, so I thought I would point it out.

My Hermann, Torty, is just as squiggly as he can be, visible full time, even after soaking, even after a long night sleeping in warm wet stbstrate. True, the squiggles are only visible in the light colored portions of his shell, but I think the same phenomenon is present all over his shell and is merely obscured in the dark areas. One thing that all these squiggled torts seem to have in common is a period of rapid growth. Edna

I'm not so sure about that. Looking at the pictures that I've seen on the forum and one page 1 of this thread you'll notice that the squiggles don't go through dark areas. I do not see any occurrence of a prominent squiggle popping out from the side of a dark area. Instead, what I see are squiggles that tend to more or less outline the shape of the scute and also the shape of the dark areas. Even when the squiggle curls around on itself around the ends it still does not penetrate dark material and shows preference for the lighter colored areas. It comes close, and may skirt around in the "gray" edge area but it does not go directly through the dark areas.

However, I haven't seen your Herman and am working with a handful of pictures is all. Could you post pictures of her shell with squiggles? I agree with you that rapid growth is also a common feature.

From what I have seen I feel that at very least we could agree that there is a strong preference for this to happen in the lighter colored material than the darker colored material. By the way, what chemical is causing the darker color? In humans its melanin, but what is it for torts?

 

[Balboa]

I could've sworn I remembered learning that Torts/Turts can drink through their skin in school. Of course that was still the stone age by modern standards. A little digging right now brought up some references to Torts drinking through their Cloaca. Maybe they just didn't want to tell us the Torts drank through their butts back then. lol

It did turn up an interesting article that may have some relevance to the inflating/deflating thing. I'll give my usual Newb sorry if its common knowledge or long disproven spiel.

Role of urinary and cloacal bladders in chelonian water economy: historical and comparative perspectives.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9951413

For some reason the squiggles make me think of the stress lines, deformations I frequently get in a nail after smashing my finger (something I do WAAAY too often) making me think of them as possibly just a cute fluke of how the scutes grow. Which also reminds me of something I'd largely forgotten about that may be pyramiding related. ON one occasion I smashed a finger so bad that for years the nail grew out bumpy, like a pyramided shell. I'd somehow damaged the root and the nail kept coming out bent up and down like waves. Over the years the waves kept getting smaller and smaller, and now that nail just grows out with a flat spot. Seems to tie in somehow with the damage done early on by being too dry idea with torts.

Terrypin's observations make me wonder about a possible UV roll as well. I'm not sure about the biology of course, but we do the D thing in our skin under the sun... and from Dan's explanation I'm getting that there is no skin between the bone and the scute on a tort? or if so very thin? There needs to be capillaries to carry the materials to and from the D producing cells. Where are those cells? The Scute? The Bone?

Cool Stuff, and dang I spend too much time thinkin

---

rofl @myself

just read through the Mythbusters thread, so no cloaca drinkin either, poor deprived torts.

 

[Tom]

Now we're doing some thinking! Very good questions. Exactly where does D3 synthesis take place? I always thought it was the skin, but does it happen on the shell too?

BTW, I'm not so sure that no absorption takes place in the cloaca. Despite what that study says.

Your post sounds just like the stuff that runs through my head every day. Made me laugh too.

 

[Badgemash]

Unfortunately the only way to find out with certainty what these structures are would be to look at thin sections in microscopes. Aside from the ethical quandary that presents I just don't have the stomach (and I doubt many biologists would) to euthanize otherwise healthy hatchlings to make these kinds of observations.

I think everyone is on the right track with these observations, but at this point the data is too scant to make an interpretation. Maybe a post could be put up in the general forum asking for photos of the torts scute lines and the environmental conditions they're seen in? Perhaps once we have more information a pattern will present itself.

-Devon