Do we need humid hides for testudo???

[gtc]

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."

 

[Yvonne G]

It is my opinion that testudo and the west coast gopherus don't have to be treated like the sulcatas and leopards. I don't think that the pyramiding in these species happens due to lack of humidity. I've been saying this for a long time, however because I don't have any science to back it up, it falls on deaf ears.

 

[Tom]

Now tell us the date of that quote and then show Andy's retraction after his conversations with Ed Pirog.

We cannot duplicate the wild environment in captivity. There are things we don't know and things we will never know. Dehydration under hot light bulbs is a common problem for captive tortoise of just about any species. Offering a humid hide is a way to mitigate those effects in our small captive environments.

I will agree with Yvonne that the wet routine is not necessary for CDTs or Testudo, at least not the same way I do it with sulcatas and leopards, but I will also say offering a simple humid hide is cheap insurance in the war on dehydration, especially for hatchlings and small ones.

 

[gtc]

Now tell us the date of that quote and then show Andy's retraction after his conversations with Ed Pirog.

We cannot duplicate the wild environment in captivity. There are things we don't know and things we will never know. Dehydration under hot light bulbs is a common problem for captive tortoise of just about any species. Offering a humid hide is a way to mitigate those effects in our small captive environments.

I will agree with Yvonne that the wet routine is not necessary for CDTs or Testudo, at least not the same way I do it with sulcatas and leopards, but I will also say offering a simple humid hide is cheap insurance in the war on dehydration, especially for hatchlings and small ones.

I cant find the date, but its interesting that he retracted the statment. He also mentioned in the same article (on tortoisetrust) that keeping the testodu species so moist softed the shell and made it more prone to damage. What do you make of that?

 

[Tom]

I don't have the experience to comment with Testudo yet. I've kept them in the past but not in any numbers and I have not yet bred them or raised them from hatchling to adulthood, as I have with other species. Here is what I CAN say: most people said the same thing about sulcatas and leopards too. "Oh my god! Those are desert species. If you keep them with humidity, a water bowl, a humid hide, or soak them too often the will get respiratory infections, shell rot and die!" With these two species and CDTs, all of the above quote is totally and completely false. Well, not totally... CDTs ARE a desert species, but they do great with warm humidity and daily soaks as hatchlings. It turns out that all the old books and Internet sites are wrong and that sulcatas actually hatch at the start of the rainy season where conditions are generally hot, humid, rainy, marshy, and there is an over abundance of food surrounding them. I am told by a researcher friend over there that just a couple of weeks into the rainy season, you can no longer find any tortoises to study because the brush, grass and greenery is so thick that you can't find them. Yes for the other 8 or 9 months out of the year it is dry, but the sulcatas are nowhere to be seen during that time. The adults retreat to extensive underground burrows that they have stocked with food during the rainy season, and no one knows what the babies do. The fact being that no one in the whole world, including me and the people who live in sulcata territory in Africa and study them, knows what the babies do, where they go or what they eat, means that all we have to go on is our observations in captivity and some educated guessing. In captivity the wet routine grows smooth healthy tortoises, while the dry routine produces stunted pyramided tortoises, at least in the case of sulcatas and leopards.

Andy wrote a big tirade calling humidity for "tortoises" (in quotes because he did not denote any difference between species) a "red herring" and comparing people who believed in that to people who believe in space aliens. It was around two or three years later that he typed up another, less volatile, retraction to his first tirade and admitted that there might be some validity to the humidity thing for some species. Ed Pirog is a tortoise author and a (possibly former) member here. Andy largely credited Ed with changing his mind about this subject.

Okay. Your turn.

 

[GBtortoises]

Hydration-in the form of correct ambient air humidity, substrate moisture and internal body hydration is imperative to correct growth and overall good health of Testudo tortoises as much as it is any other species. This is especially true of young, developing and growing tortoises.

Regardless of what takes place in the wild, or what study results show from research done in the wild very little of it is or can be replicated in such detail in captivity. While it very well could be that tortoises do not require as much exposure to humid conditions in the wild due to several other factors in their environment, in captivity the lack of those factors are why tortoises do need more exposure to humid conditions to compensate for what is lacking.

 

[kanalomele]

I have a number of years experience with testudo. I have had my chief breeder for nearly 20 years. My hatchlings are always offered a humid hide. Most love it and choose it on their own vs the dry hide they are also offered. Additionally I have had exceptional results with daily soaking of my hatchlings just as soon as they leave the brooding box. Only once have i ever had a sicly weak hatchling, and that was in my very first clutch. I have never had a single case of resperatory illness or skin issue with any hatchling. I always aspire to replicating as natural environment as possible. But these cb babies will never see the steppes their parents and grandparents were plucked out of. Most of them at best will live a long healthy life in someones backyard. They will be pets, so I begin socializing and handling them as soon as possible. I also keep them in glass deliberately so that they can see out. They watch my toddler running around and are constantly exposed to the sights and sounds of an active household. I know for a fact that the burrows my adults dig are definitely more humid than the outside air. They spend weeks at a time dug into these burrows during their summer aestivation. Why that would be different for a burrow a cb hatchling digs or borrows from an adult I have no idea. The idea that the burrows would be more humid and that a hatchling with an entire body mass of roughly a couple of stacked quarters would get dehydrated relatively quickly are a longtime part of my "golly that makes perfect sense to me" type approach to keeping and breeding. I spent years not realizing that I was doing anything controversial. If its different in the wild then so be it. But I will continue to raise my cb babies in the way that has been working for me. The few babies that I have been able to actively follow have outgrown and outpaced others bred and housed with different methods. I hope to be able to have more scientific records to offer all you sciency types. But only have the observation of their new keepers to go on. I respect that not all people do(or agree with) what I do. I can only say that it works for me.

 

[gtc]

Thanks to everyone for the replies. What you say makes a lot of sense. It nice to have people with so much experience to talk to.

My greek wouldnt use its humid hide when it was at the cool end of the enclosure, it prefered to dig itself under a spider plant instead. So I just tried to keep the substrate somewhat moist. Recently I tried putting the humid hide close to the 160W mvb I have, and finally my little guy is using it!