TortillaTheTortioise
Active Member
My hatchling tortoise when in the garden ate a live maggot from a fly larvae and he slurped it up so it is still alive. Can a maggot live in his stomach or will it die? Please help
Tortoise ate live maggot
- Thread starter TortillaTheTortioise
- Start date
Lots of turtles & torts & snakes & chameleons....eat live food - bugs, maggots, larvae, on a daily basis. It’s part of their diet and what they eat.
TortillaTheTortioise
Active Member
Ive read that some maggots if ingested live can still live in the intestines of humans and animals so that's why I got worried, but I guess in the wild they eat these things all the time. I'll just have to keep an eye on him
A maggot cannot live in their intestinal tract. It will be digested. But maggots don't just crawl around on their own out in the world. They are usually on something dead and rotting. Are you sure it was a maggot? Flies lay their eggs on rotting stuff so that when they hatch, the larvae will have something to eat.
TortillaTheTortioise
Active Member
yes the larvae was on the outside bin, some had fallen off the top of the bin and were wriggling on the ground
Ahhh... That makes sense.
We always say that tortoises are opportunistic. Yours just proved us right!
Sounds like its time to move the bin outside of the tortoise's enclosure.
