CRAZY Russian Tortoise

[joshua1160]

We bought our tortoise in a pet store in June. Up until about a week ago our tortoise has been pretty placid sleeping most of the day in its hide and coming out only to eat basically once a day in his indoor enclosure. We would take him out probably twice a week to roam around outside for 30 minutes.

All of a sudden a week ago, our tortoise out-of-the-blue started "wrecking" his enclosure by overturning and moving his logs and climbing on everything trying to escape. He spends now most of the day actively trying to escape even though it is futile because his enclosure walls are very high.

What has come over him? My attempts to reprimand him have been futile of course. What can I do to chill him out?

Thanks

 

[Yvonne G]

Well, first of all, your tortoise belongs outside in a safe and secure pen with lots of things to graze on.

Even though your tortoise is indoors, he knows that the summer is drawing to an end. Russian tortoises have very short 'awake' time. They hibernate for sometimes 8 months out of the year. And you can almost bet that any Russian tortoise you bought in a pet store is wild caught. So your tortoise is hard wired to get out there and eat, eat, eat, because pretty soon its going to be time to dig in and hibernate.