Me rambling on!!

[alley cat]

I was reading the thread about Vitashell just now and it has got me thinking!

There are comments in the other thread regarding tortoises in the wild not needing oil on their shells and the need for humidity. It occured to me that there has also recently been mention of split scutes among wild tortoises and also that there are alot of tortoises for sale on sites such as Gumtree and Preloved with awful looking shells, well these are my thoughts....

The way I understand it is that if you get a scute that sticks a bit to another as the tortoise grows this can be helped by moisurising the area to free up the scutes. Wild tortoises probably get a certain amount of natural oils on their shells due to rubbing against plants as they trundle around, now if the tortoise happens to live in a very arid landscape then it is likely the plants will also be of a dry nature so the tortoise may not get much oil being deposited onto it, so do they have badly grown shells? this is where the humidity bit comes in as I have seen people say that lack of humidity shows as bumpy shell growth in tortoises that live in these dry areas, so could it be a combination of the two? is it more one than the other?

Back to the Gumtree and Preloved tortoises...do they look like this due to lack of humidity mainly? if so then they could be in a similar condition health wise to the wild tortoises that are lacking humidity. I realise there are many other factors that would also play a part but tortoises and humidity was not a combination that I would have been aware of in my earlier tortoise keeping days. It also seems to have become much more of an issue since UVB lamps and indoor tables were recommended as part of the keepers kit, instead of keeping them in the garden (which is also not the answer)

We are all striving to grow tortoises with a perfect smooth shell growth and in reality all tortoises do not look like that, many factors affect what the tortoises in the wild end up looking like the same as they do with the ones in captivity.

Have we really improved the outcome for tortoises with the introduction of indoor living and artificial UVB? What will future figures reveal about the tortoises we are caring for now? Will they live longer lives than many that have gone before?