Jacob said:If you mean the white lines, thats his growth lines.
yagyujubei said:What do they look like when the shell is wet? I don't think that there's any cause for alarm.
yuri2012 said:yagyujubei said:What do they look like when the shell is wet? I don't think that there's any cause for alarm.
They look the same when they're dry or wet. I touched it and applied some pressure with my finger and its not soft or weird feeling. It just feels like it's part of the shell but on the surface, by looking at the picture I attached, the white spots seem like some of the black coloring on top came off the shell or something.
emysemys said:Hi Yuri2012:
Russian tortoises go through an awful lot when caught, stored then shipped. What you see looks absolutely normal for a wild caught Russian tortoise.
emysemys said:The white spots are chips out of the top layer of carotene, with the dead bone (the actual white spot) showing through. Eventually new bone and carotene will grow under that white spot and it will raise up above the existing shell and chip off...but it takes a long time, maybe years.
emysemys said:It is old damage that happened during capture and shipping. There is nothing you can do about it.
GeoTerraTestudo said:Yeah, it does look like some keratin has been stripped off the center of some scutes. Could be due to shipping after being caught from the wild, or due to crashing into things in captivity. Many tortoises have one or two chips like that, but I count 7 there, so looks he's really gotten banged up. Make sure there's nothing in the environment he can get in trouble with. Otherwise, just make sure he has a good substrate and diet so he can heal from them, and he should be fine.