Today I went to a reptile store to get food for my bearded dragon and snakes and saw a tortoise eating its poop is that normal and ok?
Ahernandez1990 said:It was a leo and a sulcata housed together the sulcata was eating the poop
Tom said:Yes. Yes they do... sometimes.
Was the tortoise housed alone I hope? Eating his buddies poop would just be gross...
GeoTerraTestudo said:In the wild, tortoises do eat the droppings of other animals, like goats for example. This probably allows them to acquire some undigested nutrients. However, they probably eat their own waste only in captivity. Many animals that would not eat their own waste in the wild do so in captivity, perhaps due to starvation, boredom, or both.
If a tortoise is eating its own poop in captivity, it might not be getting a nutritious enough diet, or it might need more activity. Although coprophagy is not unusual among captive tortoises, it is probably not truly normal, in the sense that if the tortoise were getting what it needed, it probably wouldn't feel the need to eat its own poop.
Ahernandez1990 said:That all makes sense to me they were yearlings housed in a small tank they had a lot of room to walk around but who would just want to sit in a tank all day
Baoh said:Yep, they do. For nutrient recycling and also to reacquire mutualistic symbiotes. When they eat scat of other animals, they are creating the potential for diversification of their intestinal microbiome. This can be bad if a parasite that is especially bad takes hold, but can be good in terms of feed efficiency if there are beneficials.
GeoTerraTestudo said:Baoh said:Yep, they do. For nutrient recycling and also to reacquire mutualistic symbiotes. When they eat scat of other animals, they are creating the potential for diversification of their intestinal microbiome. This can be bad if a parasite that is especially bad takes hold, but can be good in terms of feed efficiency if there are beneficials.
Tortoises (especially young ones) may eat the dung of other tortoises to acquire symbiotic gut bacteria. However, eating their own dung would not help them in this area, because there is no need to reacquire the bacteria they already have. I don't think a healthy tortoise under normal conditions would eat its own dung, unless it was young and curious about it.