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- Nov 7, 2012
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I just offered some ideas for keeping Home's hinge-back tortoises and noticed even practices I don't employ sound contrary to the advice I offered, or at least seem like they could be conflicting.
So what's up with that??
In ecology there is a concept called a bounding box. For tortoise husbandry it can contain the worst advice that worked, and the best advice that were optimal for the individual tortoises.
Think about a simple X Y graph. The X axis is the one that is flat or horizontal, the Y is the tall one or vertical. Please don't roll your eyes.
Say a good day time ambient temp is (on this graph) 4 on the X axis. However the range of 3 to 5 works. Now lets consider relative humidity on the Y axis. Say 5 is best, but 4 to 5.5 works. Now we have a square, the usually best ranges for only two parameters. That is really a only the beginning of the box.
Your individual tortoise maybe came from the colder dryer part of the range of Temp and RH that works for most of the individuals of that species. But you center the Temp and RH on the range. Your tortoise will have an adjustment period, if it's new or been kept by someone else who uses a different part of the accpetable range. It's okay, you are doing well for the animal, but adjustments can be made by you or the tortoise. A little adjusting can help if implemented by both.
If the tortoise is staying at a cooler dryer place in the enclosure, that can be a signal to adjust the enclosure.
Those ranges used when people give advice came from many observations of many tortoises, and may include data from people with funky thermometers and RH sensors. Maybe some numbers got jumbled. But for the most part the range is probably well sorted out.
Now ad a third component, say cover or places to hide. We now have a Z coordinate.
Now are 'space' is floating, it's "3D" and it is bound by temp, RH, and hide places. Say that floating black dot represents 5 hide places and a temp of 3-5, RH of 4-5.5.
New variables can be added until say five or six of the ones with the most impact on the tortoise are incorporated. Temp, RH, Hide spaces, parasite load, diet, access to water. Now the floating black dot is a ball of ranges that are acceptable to an aggregate of tortoises than have been observed.
It's a bounding box of habitat, or for us enclosure parameters.
Within this box is conflicting advice. It can be very confusing, as one parameter may offset another when too much of one can sorta be balanced by more or less of another. Each parameter for all tortoises is a much bigger box, but not best for each species, or even each individual. Most species have a pretty small box. So species specific advice should be less variable than any kind of general "tortoise" advice will ever accomplish.
This is a very simple breakdown of a talk "Homage to Santa Rosalai . . ." by Hutchinson. It addresses a part of a larger ecological idea of competitive exclusion. That would take into account 'why tortoises are not everywhere - 'cause other animals are better at using aspects of the environment than tortoises are able.
So what's up with that??
In ecology there is a concept called a bounding box. For tortoise husbandry it can contain the worst advice that worked, and the best advice that were optimal for the individual tortoises.
Think about a simple X Y graph. The X axis is the one that is flat or horizontal, the Y is the tall one or vertical. Please don't roll your eyes.
Say a good day time ambient temp is (on this graph) 4 on the X axis. However the range of 3 to 5 works. Now lets consider relative humidity on the Y axis. Say 5 is best, but 4 to 5.5 works. Now we have a square, the usually best ranges for only two parameters. That is really a only the beginning of the box.
Your individual tortoise maybe came from the colder dryer part of the range of Temp and RH that works for most of the individuals of that species. But you center the Temp and RH on the range. Your tortoise will have an adjustment period, if it's new or been kept by someone else who uses a different part of the accpetable range. It's okay, you are doing well for the animal, but adjustments can be made by you or the tortoise. A little adjusting can help if implemented by both.
If the tortoise is staying at a cooler dryer place in the enclosure, that can be a signal to adjust the enclosure.
Those ranges used when people give advice came from many observations of many tortoises, and may include data from people with funky thermometers and RH sensors. Maybe some numbers got jumbled. But for the most part the range is probably well sorted out.
Now ad a third component, say cover or places to hide. We now have a Z coordinate.
Now are 'space' is floating, it's "3D" and it is bound by temp, RH, and hide places. Say that floating black dot represents 5 hide places and a temp of 3-5, RH of 4-5.5.
New variables can be added until say five or six of the ones with the most impact on the tortoise are incorporated. Temp, RH, Hide spaces, parasite load, diet, access to water. Now the floating black dot is a ball of ranges that are acceptable to an aggregate of tortoises than have been observed.
It's a bounding box of habitat, or for us enclosure parameters.
Within this box is conflicting advice. It can be very confusing, as one parameter may offset another when too much of one can sorta be balanced by more or less of another. Each parameter for all tortoises is a much bigger box, but not best for each species, or even each individual. Most species have a pretty small box. So species specific advice should be less variable than any kind of general "tortoise" advice will ever accomplish.
This is a very simple breakdown of a talk "Homage to Santa Rosalai . . ." by Hutchinson. It addresses a part of a larger ecological idea of competitive exclusion. That would take into account 'why tortoises are not everywhere - 'cause other animals are better at using aspects of the environment than tortoises are able.