Walking

[Pond_Lilly]

What distances do babies and juveniles cherry-heads really move in the wild per day for example? I wonder if they need a lot of place to marsh around or not. Mine have sleeping quarters and some outside area, but it is not big by any means.

 

[Madkins007]

I don't recall the numbers, but wild Red-footed adults that were tracked ranged between a territory of about 10 yards and nearly a mile with no real pattern. On the other hand, there is dang little field work done on very young torts of most species.

My own experience in the outdoor pens for my yearlings is that although they are most often only using a few square feet, I found all of them in every part of the 6'x6' pen in a week.

 

[Pond_Lilly]

I don't recall the numbers, but wild Red-footed adults that were tracked ranged between a territory of about 10 yards and nearly a mile with no real pattern. On the other hand, there is dang little field work done on very young torts of most species.

My own experience in the outdoor pens for my yearlings is that although they are most often only using a few square feet, I found all of them in every part of the 6'x6' pen in a week.

Thank you! I was thinking along the lines if they need a large area to walk around to build strength and in general to get the blood going. Would be very interesting to know how much babies and yearlings walk in a day for example. I am surprised that there is so little research done about them in a wild. I also heard somewhere that cherry-head swim (!) in the wild, is it true??

 

[Redstrike]

Tortoises are very difficult to study in the wild, they have good eye sight and are very receptive to your presence well before you notice them (most of the time), making it difficult to find them and to study their natural behavior(s). Hatchlings are even more elusive given their cryptic coloration, innate hiding behavior, and small size.

I often find my two cherryhead hatchlings sleeping in various places around the enclosure, similar to what Mark has described. The more space you can provide, the better. Lots of hiding areas and dense ground foliage (real or fake plants) is a good way to provide an enriched and realistic living space. From what I've seen, I'd guess they move around fairly often.

 

[tyler0912]

Yes most tortoises float except CDT i recall! (?)
They also paddle!
I fill the bath with water about once a week and let my redfoot and cherryhead have a couple minutes swim taking them out every couple off minutes to rest!
Some times they just float and relax, sometimes they paddle about, i put a plastic ball in with thf that they like to nudge about.
They are very agile swimmers.
Yes i watched videos that was filmed in the wild of tortoises swimming!

 

[Pond_Lilly]

Tortoises are very difficult to study in the wild, they have good eye sight and are very receptive to your presence well before you notice them (most of the time), making it difficult to find them and to study their natural behavior(s). Hatchlings are even more elusive given their cryptic coloration, innate hiding behavior, and small size.

I often find my two cherryhead hatchlings sleeping in various places around the enclosure, similar to what Mark has described. The more space you can provide, the better. Lots of hiding areas and dense ground foliage (real or fake plants) is a good way to provide an enriched and realistic living space. From what I've seen, I'd guess they move around fairly often.

It is probably more likely nobody sees any point (or can't get funding) to study them in the wild. The technology is out there, the digital tags are very small nowadays and can be attached to the tortoise and a wealth of info can be collected. They have been successfully used in other hard to study species.

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Yes most tortoises float except CDT i recall! (?)
They also paddle!
I fill the bath with water about once a week and let my redfoot and cherryhead have a couple minutes swim taking them out every couple off minutes to rest!
Some times they just float and relax, sometimes they paddle about, i put a plastic ball in with thf that they like to nudge about.
They are very agile swimmers.
Yes i watched videos that was filmed in the wild of tortoises swimming!

This is so interesting! I did not know that they float. Maybe I'll try with mine once they are a bit older. I need to check out the video of a swimming tort too!

 

[tyler0912]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-m4xed0kp8

I dont agree how it was put on the slide, but thats basically what they do!

 

[Pond_Lilly]

wow, slide aside, it looks so cool! I had no idea...

 

[Madkins007]

It is probably more likely nobody sees any point (or can't get funding) to study them in the wild. The technology is out there, the digital tags are very small nowadays and can be attached to the tortoise and a wealth of info can be collected. They have been successfully used in other hard to study species.

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Redstrike is right. There are several people who have studied torts in the wild, even the South American species (such as Vinke, Vetter, Pritchard, Moscovits, Frieberg, etc.) and all have mentioned the difficulties of finding tortoises period, and how much harder to find babies. Even using trained dogs or locals getting paid/rewarded does not help find wild baby torts, especially in the conditions in SA.

Once they find them, they can radio track them, but it is cheaper and easier to use thread spools- which also give you are really good track- something radio tracking does not always accomplish.

Every tracking method has its own benefits and challenges. GPS systems don't work well in deep forest or thick grass, RFID tags are also tough to track in those kinds of conditions.

 

[Redstrike]

It is probably more likely nobody sees any point (or can't get funding) to study them in the wild. The technology is out there, the digital tags are very small nowadays and can be attached to the tortoise and a wealth of info can be collected. They have been successfully used in other hard to study species.

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Most radio telemetry and GPS transmitters present feasibility and financial issues. General rule of thumb is to never put a transmitter on any animal that exceeds 5% of its body weight. This being said, when we place transmitters on tiny animals, like hatchlings, they are very small units, which have very small batteries. The end result can be a short window of operation for tracking. You don't want to keep attaching transmitters onto the animals once the old unit dies because it's stressful to the animal. Our previous handling and the animal carting the unit around might change there behavior as well - potentially muddling our inferences on behavior. The list keeps going, bottom line is tracking neonate and juvenile animals is extremely difficult.

Radio tracking is difficult in mountainous terrain, signals bounce around between mountains, and tortoises move, so keeping a good read on them is more difficult than it might seem. Mostly, as Madkins said, it's just finding the animals to tag in the first place! Grant money does exist for home range studies, no doubt, but it's competitive! The cost of good GPS transmitters are astronomical - I'd ballpark it around $800+ each (the more expensive ones are designed to fall off, so we don't have to handle the animal(s) again).

What this all translates to is, usually, someone working with a very small data set. Small sample sizes drain researchers of their abilities to infer much about the animals being studied. I'm not going to bore you with statistics babble, gross!

We need folks to work on projects like this, as difficult as they seem, and are, it would shed light on a lot of things that we don't know.

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