![]() ![]() I have seen all three of them walking in a circle trying to flip the guy in front. Fight strategy is to force the head or rostrum-a protruding “hook” on the lower shell– underneath the other tortoise and then walk forward, flipping the other guy. In the wild they will compete for mates by trying to flip rival males. Male radiated tortoises are territorial and when they encounter each other there is often a pushing match. In summer, they rotate daily in-turn to a large outdoor enclosure in our service yard where they each enjoy days bathing in sunlight. Each day during the cold months we rotate one of them under UV lighting. Since the glass in the glasshouse filters out UV light, I provide supplemental lighting. Tortoises need the correct vitamins, minerals, and ultraviolet light for their shells develop properly. Clockwise from five o’clock they are Small, Medium, and Large. Here’s our three fresh from a vitamin-E shell treatment. It was possibly due to a deficiency in his diet when he was very young. This is not due to an injury and does not cause him problems. He has a concavity in the top back left side of his shell. Last, Large weighs about 17 pounds and was hatched 3-27-76, making him 45. His shell is the most symmetrical and has the brightest pattern. Medium weighs about 15 pounds and was hatched 4-13-87, making him 34. Further, Small weighs about 13 pounds and was hatched 7-12-1976, making him 45 years old. It is from these physical descriptions that I found their descriptive and practical names: Small, Medium, and Large. Also, each has a uniquely shaped, patterned, and sized shell. But, since our tortoises were captive-hatched at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Texas, we have records. So how do you tell the age of a tortoise anyway? There is no way to accurately tell the age of a wild tortoise, and at best we can only make an educated guess based on its size and shell condition. I often am asked how old they are and how I tell them apart. They’re all here on permanent loan from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Our first tortoise arrived just before the glasshouse opened in 2003 and the other two arrived in 2009. So today let’s get face-to-face with this creature: Astrochelys radiata, the radiated tortoise. The Cleveland Botanical Garden is fortunate to have in our Madagascar Spiny Desert biome collection an important and critically endangered animal for you to visit. He’s the only one that sports a distinctive golden forehead. Face-to-face with Medium, one of our three radiated tortoises. It was a perfect, perfect set of circumstances that brought it all together.”Ī more complete version of this story is available on Emily Mago. They have all the right intentions, and they have the wherewithal to get it done. “When this option surfaced, it was almost a heavenly intervention, if you will,” he said. When a prospective buyer appeared in the form of IDEA, which was looking for an outdoor educational experience for its students, it seemed like a match made in heaven, Burchfield said. Preserving the property became an issue again when he reflected on the fact that he and DeMoss were getting older. Gladys Porter Zoo Director Pat Burchfield and his wife, Carol DeMoss, bought Lula Sams with two other partners in 1997 when the Girl Scouts put it up for sale, and regularly invited school groups to learn about natural history and conservation.īurchfield said the point of buying the camp in 1997 was to save it from being subdivided and developed. ![]()
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