3 new females hermanni hermanni.. italian? HermanniChris23?

[HermanniChris23]

I should have been a little more clear in that statement. I meant to say it's basically impossible to know where they came from WITHOUT knowing where the adults are from.

Going back to how I was saying that they can look the same in a population but also very different, here are some photos to illustrate this for you.

The following two animals in my collection are from Calabria, Italy. While the larger animal exhibits a lot of yellow, the smaller is very dark. Most of our Calabrians are very yellow with the exception of a few darker ones.



Now, this pair are part of our Sicilian group and you will see they are very similar:


Lastly, this is a specimen from Tuscany. See how closely he resembles the Sicilian ones?

Most of our Tuscans all look like this:


Hope that gives you an idea.

[tortoiseuk]

yeah Chris, very confusing indeed. just a very trained eye like yours can see the differences

tks for the help, I'll try to get more information about these tortoises origins and I'll post more clear pics like yours

[HermanniChris23]

I'm leaning towards Puglia (Apulia). They are very round and have similar markings to ours. Corsican tortoises exhibit a second vertebral scute that dips forward like a big U into the forst vertebral scute. They also have a "frayed" pattern on the carapace. How many claws do they have on each front foot? Not that this would tell us for sure, but Corse animals almost always show 4 light colored claws on each front foot.

Again, no matter what, you can't say for sure without paperwork on the adults.
I would agree though that they are from Italy...somewhere.

[Hanako]

Hi Chris,
I don't want to hijack this thread but while you are guessing where THH are from, could you have a guess with my Big Boy, please? I was told also just Italian but I am not sure if that is correct.

I checked your webside but couldn't place him myself. He seems to have completely different yellow than any of your pictures. The yellow really stands out against the black one, but it is sort the yellow you would get if you added a bit of white colour into it, maybe a tiny bit of green tinge and mixed it. A but like phosphorescent yellow.

Big boy is quite small for his age, he is only approximately 3.5 inches, so my guess is he is one of the smaller types. His carapace is quite doomed and highest point is towards the front of the tortoise. When looked from top, he is quite rounded. His keyhole is quite tiny. His stripes at the bottom is either medium or wide. His head is darker (but has yellow on his cheeks and a bit yellow on top of his head near his neck), his legs are quite yellow/green.

Does it fit anywhere?


[IMG][/IMG]


[IMG][/IMG]

[HermanniChris23]

Hanako,

Again I have to say that we will never be 100% certain without any info on the parents or paperwork with origin. We can only guess. The only reason I can say with certainty where my groups are from is because of authentic paperwork (I had to do more than most people should have to do in order to obtain the real history of my tortoises).

Your tortoise is very dark and yes round. If I had to guess, I would say maybe Umbria or Puglia. Both locales are home to small tortoises especially Umbria. However, some Tuscan tortoises are very dark as well. Two of our Tuscan hermanni (a male and a female) are actually very dark.

[Catwoman63]

Stunning torts x

[Hanako]

Thank you very much, Chris. Unfortunately I can't provide any info about his parents because this is my first tortoise, which means that I didn't know any better and bought it from a pet shop (Wilton pet shop). All they told me is that he comes from Italy, although on the certificate there is that he was born in Germany.

[Hanako]

tortoiseuk, just to let you know, I bought two females from the same person. They look very similar to yours (including the blue marking, which means that they are very likely bred by the same person) and I was advised that they are from Calabria.

Although the colours on your photo don't look like the colours on the Chris' webside (for Calabrian tortoises which are supposed to be very bright yellow), I think it may be because the tortoises have probably never been washed. 2 weeks of daily bath and mine already look slightly more yellow then they were when I got them.