Turtle Time !!

A tortoise is a turtle, but a turtle is not always a tortoise... Okay. Now that we got that one over with!!!

[See, they're all turtles, but a tortoise is a turtle that is terrestrial. Turtles can be further defined as tortoise, "aquatic turtle" or "semi-aquatic turtle".] I always call them turtles because I prefer the sound of that word. It just rolls off the tongue better!

I've been amassing photos and movies of the tortoises, but in an effort to not take too too many photos (they are so cute in their odd way!), I don't have a lot of recent pix. Its never difficult, though, to get nice shots of turtles eating. They love eating! This spring, with all the nice native annual plants we saw this year, we were able to gather up a tasty buffet for our pet desert tortoises. Desert tortoises have been found to selectively prefer legume plants like the ones in these photos. Above, Megagodzilla is eating an Astragalus didymocarpus. To the right, Godzilla (left) is joined by Gamara. They're eating Astragalus and Lupinus bicolor. These leguminous plants are known for their nitrogen-fixing capabilities. This also benefits desert tortoises... when tortoises eat legumes, their bodies do not require as much water to metabolize the food. This is a great benefit for Mojave Desert tortoises, which experience rain only for very short times in the early spring.

And here we have Bruiser, one of our young African spur-thighed tortoises, looking very tortoisey... wouldn't you agree? Our four spur-thighs are now 5 years old, and just about to hit their growth-spurt age. They are a little larger than a grapefruit, but will grow to be over 100 pounds as adults!! (that'll be another couple decades, since they live to over 100 years old.) Next to Bruiser on the photo below is our runt, little Monster X. He even behaves like a runt - he's picky with his food, easily scared by the larger tortoises, and very very easily distracted. Usually I feed him separately from the others. Oh, by the way, these turtles are too young to know their gender, so I'm referring to them in the universal Him. In this photo, you can see the "spurs" on the thighs of Bruiser's back leg (the little horns). They protected the tortoise from predators when they lived amongst the mega fauna of Africa - lions and hyenas.

I'll leave you with a video I've called, "Tortoise Feeding Frenzy" As you can see in the movie, these tortoises live up to their names - Merciless Eating Machines. They nearly inhale their food! Spike, the final of the four to enter the movie, displays a funny turtle quality - linear movement. These tortoises seem to insist on moving forward in a strait line. If that means climbing over something... so be it... Seems like maladaptive behavior for something so clunky; but they've survived with this behavior (we believe) for hundreds of thousands of years, so it must benefit them somehow!! The video also shows little Monster X (aka Runtlinger) and his picky eating style and easy distract ability. He barely eats anything while the other tortoises inhale their greens.