Quote:
Originally Posted by Geomyda
Hope that you all enjoyed the Symposium Saturday?
Out of interest, one of the speakers apparently gave a talk about a new tool for regulating the UK Tortoise trade.....
can anyone expand on this?
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Paul
Have you heard the expression you are what you eat ? then this is kind of it for tortoises.
in laymans terms or as this one understood it.
When a tortoise grows it uses elements from the food it eats ( begining with the elements within the egg)
There where several listed, carbon and nitrogen and a few others.
samples are taken from the keratin covering the scute, several small pieces are taken from the centre to the outside, these are examined and the results are corrulated.
what is acuatly being looked at are any differences in the elements. Apparently there are different isotoypes for each element , and these are found in different areas of the world.
So the study is hoping to be able to show that if a captive bred tortoise is examined then the same element should have a consistent isotoype throughout its growth. where a wild caught that continues to grow in captivity would have different isotpes of the same element.
Obviously there is still a lot of work to be done, the study is looking at Horsfield and Graecas .
They are looking for more animals to include in the study. But for this they require samples of "known animals" ie they must know for definite that they are captive bred or wild caught .
i probably havent described it that well but hopefully you get the jist.
Andy