are tortoises pretty good at deciding which foods are safe to eat?

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CourtneyAndCarl

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I have a plant in my front yard that I was unable to identify, so I never offered any to Carl (my baby hermann's) in his food dish. However, we were out, sunning, one day, and of course the one plant I could NOT keep him away from was this one. He would completely destroy the little seedlings, try to reach for the taller, bigger leaves by extending his neck to lengths that I didn't know were possible... If ever a tortoise was addicted to a plant, Carl is addicted to this plant.... only problem, I had absolutely no idea what kind it was, but I figured if he was going out of his way to find this particular plant, it must not have been too bad.

After a bit of research into it, I've found out that Carl's "drug" as I call it, now, is sedum spectabile AKA Iceplant. I still rarely offer the leaf to him, just because I'm not sure if it's something he should be eating, but whenever we are outside, I think he remembers exactly where it's at :)

I attached a picture of Carl going to town on his leaf that I recently used as bait for a "photo shoot", just in case I am completely off about what type of plant it is and you can tell just by looking at the leaf or something :)
 

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Tom

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The answer to your questions is sometimes. Many people will tell you that their tortoises only eat things that are okay for them, but at least in some situations, they will eat things they shouldn't. I don't know that plant you are feeding, but it is not ice plant. We can guess that it is safe to eat since your tortoise is not dead. In the future, I would not take such risks. It would have been a darn shame if your hungry tortoise had chosen poorly that day.
 

Madkins007

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Tortoises are considered to have poor 'nutritional wisdom'- that is, they do not always make the best choices. They will eat dog doo, gorge themselves on 'junk food', and more when there are more nutritious options offered.

That said- they don't really need great nutritional wisdom since few of the plants in their natural ranges can hurt them much- they can freely eat a lot of things that would kill other animals. Of course this does not always help in captivity!

MOST of the time, a tortoise will avoid a freely growing plant that it feels is bad for it but we should still be aware of what is growing in their pens.
 
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