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- Jun 18, 2012
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I need some help. How can you tell the age of a Russian tortoise? If you know how thanks, if not its OK. Thanks bye.
Cant find out what age my russian tortoise is?
- Thread starter tortoiselover1
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Unless you know the hatch date, its quite impossible to know exactly how old a russian (steppe) tortoise is. We can give you a guesstimate, and we come pretty close, but not exact. We go by size, shape and condition, so we'll need to see some nice, clear pictures.
tortoiselover1 said:
emysemys is right
It's probably a safe assumption that your steppe tortoise is wild-caught and under 20 years old, as most in the pet trade are. I that case, just count the major rings on the plastral scutes. As long as your tortoise has been experiencing alternating periods of fast summer growth and hibernation, then it will lay down one major ring for each year, but probably only until the age of about 20 (after which, growth slows down considerably).
I didn't think that counting rings was at all reliable for aging torts... even young ones.
JoesMum said:
Research has shown that it is reliable for wild gopher tortoises (Gopherus polyphemus) in the southeastern United States (Aresco and Guyer 1998, 1999). I have not read any similar papers on steppe tortoises, but given that these tortoises (as well as Hermann and Ibera Greek tortoises) experience more dramatic seasonal changes than the gopher tortoise, they probably lay down scute annuli, too.
EDIT: I just found a paper by Bertolero et al. (2005), showing that Hermann tortoises do lay down scute annuli, but that growth ring counting is only accurate in this species until the age of 7, and not 20 as in gopher tortoises:
http://vipersgarden.at/PDF_files/PDF-536.pdf
Since Hermann tortoises are the closest living relatives of the steppe tortoise, it's reasonable to infer that this technique would work until age 7 in wild steppe tortoises, too.
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