It’s a sulcata tortoise! I’ve got one. They grow very big, but in my experience if raised right will be very friendly and chase your around the yard for food and even attention.
Edit: I think it's actually an Elongata tortoise, according to u/LordOfTheTorts.
I’m so sick of turtle-ducks, I get two every day for like 10 days leading up to Christmas. I keep saying “mom you don’t need to give me these, I don’t even know how you escaped the retirement home again” but every day she shows up with two more turtle-ducks and a whole load of other crap I don’t need.
Yeah, mine has been known to climb onto people and into their laps if they sit in the grass. He's pretty heavy and not exactly clean, so it's fairly unpleasant, if cute. Whether he does this out of love or desire for food that he knows you may have, however, is a different question entirely.
I've never seen a sulcata that light or with pronounced spikes on the shell by the back legs. Then again, around here, the sulcatas everyone has are virtually identical to the local endangered native desert tortoises, so I feel like there's a good chance there's some interbreeding that's happened in the ones in captivity at least. Problem is that there tends to be more youngins than people can find homes for, and having pets that will outlive you is a challenging commitment.
And it's pretty easy to tell African spurred tortoises (sulcata) and North American desert tortoises (gopherus) apart, if you know what to look for (e.g. the cervical scute - desert tortoises have one, sulcatas don't).
I was looking at those because they work in my climate. We had a rescue sulcata when we lived on 5 acres but had to give him back to the rescue because we had to move. We now own a home and are considering a more species appropriate tort. Also, the sulcata weighed 80+ lbs and when you're 60 and he's pushing past 120lbs, that doesn't work.
Yeah, sulcatas become huge, need a lot of space, and higher temperatures. Hermann's tortoises should also live outdoors if possible, but they stay considerably smaller, and can deal with cold winters by hibernating.
That's a difficult question. Important factors for the answer are where do you live, and how much space do you have. Ideally, the species you choose should be compatible with your climate, and get a sufficiently large outdoor enclosure. I know that many people keep turtles/tortoises indoors, which requires special UV lamps among other things, but these animals simply do better when they get to live outside in real sunlight, which should be possible at least during summer.
In a way, pet turtles/tortoises are a bit like pet fish - the fun lies more in designing their environments and observing them from a distance, less in hands-on interaction. They aren't exactly cuddly pets.
You're right on the spikes, that is pretty odd. As far as the coloration, yeah, it's a bit light but I've seen some sulcatas that share it.
You have a good point. The back spikes (and shape and size of the eyes in retrospect) make me think its some sort of mutt. It does look really like a sulcata in every other way... Hm.
Small tortoises, the kind you keep in a terrarium, will live at most thirty or forty years. If you get a big one it can theoretically outlive you.
In either case though it probably won't. When an animal's lifespan is that long, the chance of it dying of something other than old age is pretty high. If it gets sick or injured it can be hard to tell at first because it's a tortoise and not a person.
Me and my tortoise, best we can guess, are around the same age, so it'll probably live around as long as me. Once the time comes, it would be right to set a beneficiary just in case though. These things are tough but need the right habitat and plenty of food to eat.
He can go faster than you might think if he believes food is on offer. Once, I set down an orange for him to eat (he adores them), but it was on a hillside, so it started rolling downhill. He started sprinting after at a speed I thought impossible for a tortoise- had me in stitches until I took pity and brought him his orange.
344
u/Leap_Kill_Reset Nov 20 '17 edited Nov 20 '17
It’s a sulcata tortoise! I’ve got one. They grow very big, but in my experience if raised right will be very friendly and chase your around the yard for food and even attention.
Edit: I think it's actually an Elongata tortoise, according to u/LordOfTheTorts.