Can someone please tell me if my red footed tortoise is a male or female!? Just recently bought it and would like to know i heard you can tell by that curve of the shell. I can't tell!
It's hard to tell from that angle. Take a few more shots for us. Yes there are a few things on the shell to look at, like hourglassing (which yours is showing a minor amount of) the bottom of the shell concaving in (which this angle doesn't show) but the tail is the key. Some Redfoot females with show slight concaved and hourglassed plastics (mine does) but that tail never lies.
Get us a shot with the tort on its back and take the picture from behind so we can see the tail. Is the tail short and fat or long and curved all the way around to the torts leg?
Try to get a couple shots like this.
This is my adult female Redfoot. As you can see the plaston (bottom part of the shell) is concaved which points to it being male but the tail says female all the way. If this were a male the amount of concave would be 3 or 4 times this amount. Yours is still not fully mature so we can't use the shell by itself as a determining factor.
I'm going to say juvenile male, that take does look long. See if you can get a picture upside down like that where the tort is relaxed with legs a tale out.
Mikes female (left picture) has kind of a big tail.
Yep, male. The other thing you look at is the anal suctes (the notch around the tale) yours is thickening.
Male
Without knowing The hatch date and how it was cared for/fed all we can do is guess on age. A health and proper raised Redfoot that is 6-8" is most likely already 3 or could be much older and just had stunted growth. You'll probable just have to pick a birthday and stick with it.
That carapace tells the tale of a very well-raised tortoise. Externally, it looks perfectly healthy. Judging by the hand holding it, I'm guessing 7-8 inch animal. Assuming it was given good care (again, not easy to produce a tortoise with that smooth of a shell, so this is likely, unless it was a SA farm-raised animal, which is not impossible at all), the tortoise is probably around 4-5. Very difficult to say with certainty, however. Some take 6 years to reach that size. Some specimens have reached it in 3.