Huge leopard tortoises

[leonardo the tmnt]

Wow they are huge!!

 

[Neal]

These pictures have been thrown around a few times. There's even a pretty good video compilation on youtube.

I hope to see some of these in person some day.

 

[BeeBee*BeeLeaves]

You can Import the eggs in. But good luck finding anyone to ship you some eggs.

One of these years, we - the we leap for leopards bunch - need to do an Easter egg hunt in Spain and Germany and come back with baskets of Euro captive bred eggs so they can hatch in the USA. Just putting it out there. Or we need to lobby the USDA! Hmmmm ... a trip might be more fun! : )

 

[sibi]

I'm with you BeeBee. I would love to find this guy in Spain and bring back some special eggs. I know someone in Spain that can check the internet and check this out.

 

[jaizei]

You can Import the eggs in. But good luck finding anyone to ship you some eggs.

One of these years, we - the we leap for leopards bunch - need to do an Easter egg hunt in Spain and Germany and come back with baskets of Euro captive bred eggs so they can hatch in the USA. Just putting it out there. Or we need to lobby the USDA! Hmmmm ... a trip might be more fun! : )

Regarding shipping eggs, if you haven't read its interesting
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/thread-26371.html

 

[BeeBee*BeeLeaves]

Thanks jaizei, OMG, amazing thread. Super up, and then down. I am so bummed now about those babies, little Jeep. Makes you wonder what happened, a lot. Sigh.

 

[Levi the Leopard]

Whoa, I just read that shipping egg thread.
What a bummer...

 

[Cycere]

Same. My condolences to them, what a horrible ending to such a positive start.

 

[Mick.Ire]

there is some research being carried out on these big Ethiopian leopards and hopefully DNA analysis to distinguish are they are sub-species or complete separate species. I know Richard Fife has some in the US. Some think they are a race of hybrids, originating from sulcata xleopard crosses maybe thousands of years ago.

Here's some pics a friend sent me, these came into Spain and some ended up in the UK where my friend had the privilege of looking after some of them.

Here's the original animals that came in, take a close look. These are all WC.



As far as I know these are all offspring from the original group.

 

[wellington]

Great pics. Sure hope that enclosure they are all in is much, much bigger then what we are seeing in the pic. If not, how sad

 

[Mick.Ire]

As far as I know this was in a zoo where they were originally being held when seized.

 

[diamondbp]

they are really impressive!