Hermann subspecies

El_barto

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Joined
Jan 19, 2021
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France
Hi everyone,

I'm currently looking to buy hermann's tortoises, and I am specifically looking for Varoise western hermann's tortoises.

One of the breeder I contacted sent me this picture :

156458384_870793073755937_6438402621119342821_n.jpg

Can anyone confirm that they're actually western hermann's?

And an other person sent me these pictures :

156277591_258313105762736_6173912426310159657_n.jpg

156522901_530444144600055_2673069130039590109_n.jpg
156698258_540902283549110_8104161222684444555_n.jpg

And this is going to be a hard one: to me they do look like western hermanns (although botton left one on the last picture has more easternish black spots), but I'd like to confirm that they are (or could be) from Var, France as the person said. I probably need to call @HermanniChris right away for that one; I'm sorry that I don't have more pics of the head and everything, but hopefully these pictures will be enough to tell if they are not for Var for certain.

Thanks everyone!
 

method89

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bottom left is definitely sketchy...
 

HermanniChris

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Whoever sent you those pics must be a scammer, sadly. They sent you a pic of pure baby eastern Hermann’s and then adult pics of both hybrids and some pure western Hermann’s. Truly amazing. Might be time to make a new section on Hermanni Haven called, “How to Recognize Idiot Scammers” or something like that. Wish I had better news for you. Unfortunately, Var is the second hardest locale to find anywhere in the world unless you’re in Germany where a lot of the founder stock in the hobby there is in fact from Var. Took me over 2 decades to find some legally and get them to the USA and it was very few.
 

El_barto

New Member
Joined
Jan 19, 2021
Messages
9
Location (City and/or State)
France
Whoever sent you those pics must be a scammer, sadly. They sent you a pic of pure baby eastern Hermann’s and then adult pics of both hybrids and some pure western Hermann’s. Truly amazing. Might be time to make a new section on Hermanni Haven called, “How to Recognize Idiot Scammers” or something like that. Wish I had better news for you. Unfortunately, Var is the second hardest locale to find anywhere in the world unless you’re in Germany where a lot of the founder stock in the hobby there is in fact from Var. Took me over 2 decades to find some legally and get them to the USA and it was very few.

Thank you so much! I am in France, and a lot of people pretend to have varoise Hermann's here - some of them probably do, but it looks like it's more likely to find them on the black market... Those pictures were sent by a "respectable" breeder for the babies and a private individual for the four adult males, and it's veeery common here to have eastern's sold as western's, despite the strict law (and even in the most renowned pet shops...). I suspect that the second person might not even be aware that some of his tortoises are hybrids. I don't understand how this is possible, here each legal tortoise is chipped and its characteristics are recorded in a national file, including the subspecies. That means a well-intentioned (but not very knowledgeable) breeder might accidentally cross breed subspecies because, you know, why wouldn't you trust your tortoise's identity card? That's such a shame, especially coming from a country where some of us try so hard to protect the last of our local Hermann's.
 
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