Tortoise habits ???

newCH

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Hello,
Every night I give Sheldon a soak & then a snack. After the snack, he clearly puts himself to bed.
I remember they are diurnal, but I was wondering if that habit is something that they are "programmed"
to do? If only my human children had been so good at going to bed ! I love it ! No worries about it.
Do all torts go to bed like that ?
~ Thanks
 

crimson_lotus

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My tortoise doesn't always go to bed after dinner, sometimes she walks around for a bit or steps all over me while I change her water and clean up her substrate a bit.

With dinner, however...she is always up and standing where I place her food when I come home from work! So there is a habit here, but it has to do with food:p
 

Prairie Mom

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I wish that's how my kids were too!

Ya know...my tortoise is actually the opposite. She does eat better after a soak (same as yours), but she soaks first and then is awake and ready for the day. She's fallen right into the routine that seems to work for us all.

I have learned very quickly that they are DEFINITELY CREATURES of HABIT. If I move her hide to the wrong place, she will work on moving it BACK. I have a separate temporary home made up for her in a large storage tote when we travel. If I don't place things the way they are in her enclosure at home, she rearranges them herself! She's done that to her "bed" several times; once she even scootched the hide over her WATER DISH to get it in the correct position. Finally, this torty Mom got a clue and has now learned that her sleeping hide must be in the right-hand corner of her chamber no matter WHAT and SO IT SHALL BE FOREVER MORE! :p
 

Jodie

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Both of my big Leopards resist habits. Scarlett goes to bed about half the time. The other half I have to maneuver her from the basking area of her enclosure into her hide. Not easy with a 20 pound tortoise. Mort tries to sleep some place different every night. He is only about 5 pounds, so he is easier. He also rearranges his stuff randomly. I call him Pig Pen.
 

Prairie Mom

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Both of my big Leopards resist habits. Scarlett goes to bed about half the time. The other half I have to maneuver her from the basking area of her enclosure into her hide. Not easy with a 20 pound tortoise. Mort tries to sleep some place different every night. He is only about 5 pounds, so he is easier. He also rearranges his stuff randomly. I call him Pig Pen.
Thanks for posting this. That's really interesting to me! Polar opposite from my beastie. I'm amazed how different tortoises appear to be. I often wonder are these personality traits species specific, individual tort -specific, or a combination of both?
 

Chenderson

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My tortoise has the habit of when I bath her, and put her food in. She will eat a couple of bits, walk through her water dish, go back to the food and repeat the cycle, then dig herself a hole for 30 minutes under the basking spot. Maybe its just routines they get used to for comfort, all humans have a form of ocd, maybe animals, precisely tortoises work the same way.
 

newCH

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OCD, I like that one ! Good to know there are Creatures of habit out there. Interesting some of you have rebel torts opposing habits !
 

rkelleh

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My Ninja heads to bed every night around 6pm in the same spot and Nertle stays up later until around 8pm and is in a different spot each night. Nertle seems to be up bright and early while Ninja sleeps in a bit waiting for the lights to come on. I have been wondering if it is habit or just odd behavior and I have become over zealous monitoring them. Good to know the torts just have their own personalities and it probably is just me worrying for no reason.
 

smarch

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they definitely are creatures of habit. Every morning I wake up to feed Nank and he's already sitting at his food dish waiting... except on Fridays when I wake him up an hour early, then when it gets close to bed time he almost always puts himself to bed first.
 

puffy137

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My tortoise enclosure is about 24feet long with houses at each end , they mostly prefer the larger house . They also have a smaller hide which I built for the smaller ones which is right in the middle half way between the 2 houses. Queen Anne is the only one who has slight pyramiding . & I believe it could be because she isn't as active as the others . So I decided to put the food at the end which is further away from where they mostly live, hoping the extra effort will do Her Maj some good . She realized what I was up to & instead of going back to the usual hide , tucked herself into the half way house , which is much to small for her ,nearer to the food.:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 

Lyn W

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Lola's routine has always been to have a soak when I get home from work so that I get to spend some time with him and make sure he's OK, he then has something to eat and takes himself off to bed. However over the Xmas holidays I decided to soak him in the morning when I had more time. This totally confused Lola and even though he had only been up about an hour he still followed the same routine and went back to bed! Without the soak he stayed up.....definitely set in his ways!
 

Donna/Turbo

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My Ninja heads to bed every night around 6pm in the same spot and Nertle stays up later until around 8pm and is in a different spot each night. Nertle seems to be up bright and early while Ninja sleeps in a bit waiting for the lights to come on. I have been wondering if it is habit or just odd behavior and I have become over zealous monitoring them. Good to know the torts just have their own personalities and it probably is just me worrying for no reason.

Turbo heads to bed every night around 6 and always goes to the same spot in his humid hide. Creatures of habit!
 

smarch

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When franklin got his new slightly bigger custom enclosure, my dad had built in a hide for him and a shelf on top for me to grow tortoise plants... well it took almost 2 months for Franklin to use THAT hide, he kept using his much too small log from when I first got him... and if I took out the log, under his food dish. So I put the log back in and in time he now sleeps in his box every night!
 

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