I know we all here recommend humid hides, especially for young tortoises. That's why I was very surprised to read this on tortoisetrust. What do you all think?
"It is critically important to address one very common piece of misinformation in this context. It has been claimed that juvenile tortoises (for example, Testudo graeca) spend most of their time in the wild in “humid†microclimates where ambient conditions are in the range of 90-100% RH. This is completely false. One part of our study involved taking many thousands of measurements in the natural habitat to establish the actual conditions experienced. Our methodology involved the use of miniature automatic data loggers that recorded both temperature and humidity with a very high degree of precision. We took recordings over a complete 12-month cycle in several key habitats. We also attached loggers to tortoises and recovered them later to collect the data. In total, we collected 18,000 data points detailing humidity alone. What we found - in brief - was that juvenile tortoises were not experiencing substantially different levels of humidity than adults. While it is perfectly true that tortoises make extensive use of selected microclimates, the levels recorded in these were in the range of 34-60% RH. The sole occasions when levels in excess of 90% were recorded were during thunderstorms and episodes of rain."
"It is critically important to address one very common piece of misinformation in this context. It has been claimed that juvenile tortoises (for example, Testudo graeca) spend most of their time in the wild in “humid†microclimates where ambient conditions are in the range of 90-100% RH. This is completely false. One part of our study involved taking many thousands of measurements in the natural habitat to establish the actual conditions experienced. Our methodology involved the use of miniature automatic data loggers that recorded both temperature and humidity with a very high degree of precision. We took recordings over a complete 12-month cycle in several key habitats. We also attached loggers to tortoises and recovered them later to collect the data. In total, we collected 18,000 data points detailing humidity alone. What we found - in brief - was that juvenile tortoises were not experiencing substantially different levels of humidity than adults. While it is perfectly true that tortoises make extensive use of selected microclimates, the levels recorded in these were in the range of 34-60% RH. The sole occasions when levels in excess of 90% were recorded were during thunderstorms and episodes of rain."