She explained that seeing as tortoises have remained unchanged in evolutionary terms over millions of years, they are hard wired to prefer their natural environmental temps.(Even though they have never been in their country of origin before) I was talking to a lady with many years of tort experience recently and asked her if she thought that tortoises adapted to their environments in captivity, for example temperature ideals. For me their hibernation is beneficial in that it gives me some "relief" in terms of having to care for less tortoises throughtout the winter indoors which in turn actually allows me to keep more tortoises overall.
The only thing that I can see hibernation being beneficial to the tortoise for is to establish and maintain seasonal schedules. Whereas my tortoises that have been overwintered seem to nest more sporadically throughout the summer. In terms of breeding, those that are hibernated have a more consistent breeding schedule, always producing the seasons first clutches of eggs throughout mid June into early July. In terms of health and activity I have seen no difference whatsoever between those that are hibernated and those that are overwintered. Many others of mine are overwintered indoors. Some of my tortoises live outdoors year round, hibernating "naturally" in their outdoor enclosures, with some insulation assistance from me. Remove that adversity and they have no natural reason to have to hibernate.įor years I used to hibernate all of my Northern Mediterranean species. That is absolutely the only known reason for them to hibernate. Tortoises in the wild, particularly Nothern Mediterranean Testudo species have evolved to hibernate in order to escape long periods of cold weather and lack of food during this time-winter. Thanks for your valued opinion, I may change my methods accordingly if it feels like the right thing to do. This hibernation debate has sparked a new topic of research for me personally. I'm not sure what you gain from implying such? I actually think it would be more straight forward to just carry on and allow them to stay active. I don't think its fair to assume one would hibernate their animals for convenience-done correctly the hibernation process is not the easy way it takes weeks of preparation, constant monitoring and a very careful temperature constant to be safe.
I welcome friendly debate over these chelonia issues as that is how we collectively,we provide the best environments we can for the animals in our care. I expect there are hundreds of people on this forum with varying ways of raising their animals, how lucky we are to have each other as a resource. Perhaps many of us choose not to network due to the reasons of for example that they encounter so called experts who are judgmental towards others who do not do the same or are different. My 16/17 yrs of chelonia keeping maybe insignificant to you but I don't think anyone should be judging anyone else on that in any case do you? My time with chelonians is not significant to this topic.I have had the privilege of growing up on one continent(with its own group of well informed so called experts) and moving to another-this opens your mind and this is why I don't assume i know everything I need to know and seek out forums like this to basically, hopefully -learn.Information is changing and its important to be open to different ideas. I like to the point-you won't ruffle my feathers!
0 kommentar(er)
