3 ms·

A guide to caring for sulcata tortoises as pets

23 points by brudgers 4y ago

eyelidlessness 4y ago
I started reading this with the bias “they’re like cats who want your attention less”, and I’m modifying that bias to “objectively need less of your direct interaction”.
hunglee2 4y ago
these guys are desert tanks - often sold as adorable babies to buyers who don't realise they live up to 120 years (therefore generational pet) and can get up to 150lbs in weight. They are the third largest land species of tortoise, behind only the Aldabra and Galapagos. need sunny and dry (S.California, Arizona, Texas), a massive and secure enclosure (i.e concrete walls they can't climb over ideally) and a lot of grass / hay to feed them on. these guides are great, but really the first line should be 'not suitable as pets'!
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  'not suitable as pets'! Absolutely! It should be illegal to sell these in "pet" stores. Doing so is abuse --- of both the animal and the unsuspecting buyer.
  - hunglee2 4y ago
    100% - reputable breeders only!
  - pvaldes 4y ago
    Illegal wildlife trade must end, period. But there is lately an ideological and pseudoreligious trend targeting the pet stores and questioning the people that has pets. In Spain is illegal since a few years having a ball python as pet and a new law passed in 2022 make illegal that a children breeds a hamster, or a bunny, or a canary without a breeder permit and this is a nonsense and mistake of planetary dimensions. We will see how this ends, but I'm not hopeful about it. This world looks more and more like being filled with simple but incorrect decisions made by young forms of AI that really don't understand neither humans or the world. Avoid youngsters to be exposed to animals because children could fail and kill pets, is one of the worse ideas in the human history. Children need to fail and deal with the consequences to become stable adults. Your robotic dog will not clean you when you are elder I would prefer people choosing a [legally adquired] long lived sulcata tortoise over choosing a cat in Australia, all the time. Much easier to keep contained and care for in arid places, much more sustainable to feed (not need to spend gas to import chilean anchovies from the other coin of the planet), and in general, less harmful for the ecosystems
    - jqpabc123 4y ago
      Much easier to keep contained No, they're not. You're making the same erroneous assumption as most unsuspecting buyers. Sulcata turtles can easily burrow under an ordinary fence. If kept indoors, they will literally dig through your walls to escape. These animals are built to roam and determined to do so in search of food and a mate. They will work to destroy anything preventing them from doing so --- even if it means destroying themselves in the process.
      - pvaldes 4y ago
        still easier to contain than a cat
unwind 4y ago
The wikipedia page [1] says: They also face threats from the pet trade as they are over harvested. Which would seem to indicate that they are not very suitable as pets, unless you can source them ethically, something I would assume to be rather hard for people living far away from where they originate. Edit: TFA is blocked by my work computer's surf police, perhaps it's a satirical piece illustrating how dumb it would be to have such an animal as a pet, I don't know. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_spurred_tortoise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_spurred_tortoise
- klyrs 4y ago
  It is not a parody. It uses the words "ostensibly" and "theoretically" in describing the tortoise's lifespan, amidst all the warnings of what can go wrong if you don't properly care for them. It sounds like they're acknowledging that people are gonna have these animals as pets, damn the cost and consequence, and kill them through neglect.

23 points by brudgers 4y ago

I started reading this with the bias “they’re like cats who want your attention less”, and I’m modifying that bias to “objectively need less of your direct interaction”.

hunglee2 4y ago

these guys are desert tanks - often sold as adorable babies to buyers who don't realise they live up to 120 years (therefore generational pet) and can get up to 150lbs in weight. They are the third largest land species of tortoise, behind only the Aldabra and Galapagos. need sunny and dry (S.California, Arizona, Texas), a massive and secure enclosure (i.e concrete walls they can't climb over ideally) and a lot of grass / hay to feed them on. these guides are great, but really the first line should be 'not suitable as pets'!

jqpabc123 4y ago
'not suitable as pets'! Absolutely! It should be illegal to sell these in "pet" stores. Doing so is abuse --- of both the animal and the unsuspecting buyer.
- hunglee2 4y ago
  100% - reputable breeders only!
- pvaldes 4y ago
  Illegal wildlife trade must end, period. But there is lately an ideological and pseudoreligious trend targeting the pet stores and questioning the people that has pets. In Spain is illegal since a few years having a ball python as pet and a new law passed in 2022 make illegal that a children breeds a hamster, or a bunny, or a canary without a breeder permit and this is a nonsense and mistake of planetary dimensions. We will see how this ends, but I'm not hopeful about it. This world looks more and more like being filled with simple but incorrect decisions made by young forms of AI that really don't understand neither humans or the world. Avoid youngsters to be exposed to animals because children could fail and kill pets, is one of the worse ideas in the human history. Children need to fail and deal with the consequences to become stable adults. Your robotic dog will not clean you when you are elder I would prefer people choosing a [legally adquired] long lived sulcata tortoise over choosing a cat in Australia, all the time. Much easier to keep contained and care for in arid places, much more sustainable to feed (not need to spend gas to import chilean anchovies from the other coin of the planet), and in general, less harmful for the ecosystems
  - jqpabc123 4y ago
    Much easier to keep contained No, they're not. You're making the same erroneous assumption as most unsuspecting buyers. Sulcata turtles can easily burrow under an ordinary fence. If kept indoors, they will literally dig through your walls to escape. These animals are built to roam and determined to do so in search of food and a mate. They will work to destroy anything preventing them from doing so --- even if it means destroying themselves in the process.
    - pvaldes 4y ago
      still easier to contain than a cat

unwind 4y ago

The wikipedia page [1] says: They also face threats from the pet trade as they are over harvested. Which would seem to indicate that they are not very suitable as pets, unless you can source them ethically, something I would assume to be rather hard for people living far away from where they originate. Edit: TFA is blocked by my work computer's surf police, perhaps it's a satirical piece illustrating how dumb it would be to have such an animal as a pet, I don't know. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_spurred_tortoise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_spurred_tortoise

klyrs 4y ago
It is not a parody. It uses the words "ostensibly" and "theoretically" in describing the tortoise's lifespan, amidst all the warnings of what can go wrong if you don't properly care for them. It sounds like they're acknowledging that people are gonna have these animals as pets, damn the cost and consequence, and kill them through neglect.