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[Naturegirl1999]

Late post for this, but found my tortoise yesterday. She'd managed to burrow down past a piece of furniture she had no earthly right to be able to burrow past, and wedged herself behind a bunch of hobby supplies. She was cold after 24 hours out of the viv, but warmed up fast and has been eating fine.

Also just got a replacement thermostat for her. Her previous one broke when the heat lamp bulb blew so I was needing to regulate her temperature by manually turning her lamp on and off, which is far from ideal.

Good thing you found her. What furniture did she burrow through?

[Grim Portent]

She crawled through or under a set of cardboard boxes and loose hobby supplies and under a set of wire drawers which have a gap under them about her height, but which was filled with various items. Don't know how she did it without leaving a visible trail of moved items, she's not exactly a narrow girl and there was no unobstructed path to where she wound up.

[dragdeler]

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[LordBaal]

Well, since pete is 2 years old and hence I see Peppa Pig almost religiously, I can tell you turtles are apt at escaping, getting lost and climbing trees.

[dragdeler]

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[scriver]

English turtles are much more docile than the more militaristic germanic shield-toads

[dragdeler]

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[Grim Portent]

I think Athena is from Poland, though I'd have to check her papers* to be sure. She's quite a stubborn little thing, barely an hour after being back in her viv she was knocking on the glass to get back out.

I used to have a tall arch of bark in her viv, she loved climbing it but she kept falling off and landing on her back so I took it away. The snake has it now after he lost his log priviledges after knocking over his climbing log so it knocked out his viv door and let him escape.


*Tortoises are regulated to make sure they're not wild caught because that's been a big problem in the past. I've got a certificate with her month and year of birth, city of birth and so on, and the receipt for her stapled to it. Her species is native to Greece and Turkey primarily in case anyone's interested.

[ChairmanPoo]

Are there wild tortoises in Poland?

[Grim Portent]

Are there wild tortoises in Poland?

Not that I'm aware of. Legal pet tortoises either come from private breeders or tortoise farms, in the case of mine I presume the latter. Farms and breeders can be found basically anywhere since you can breed tortoises in entirely artifical conditions, you just have to deal with whatever the breeder side of registering tortoises is like. Farms are a bit more common in places with appropriate weather though.

Poaching wild Hermann's Tortoises from their native habitat to sell is a thing, and tortoises are still one of the more commonly stolen pet reptiles because they have a rather high value for how easy they are to transport and care for.



Pre-post edit: I went and fished out her documents, she was bred in Serbia and registered for commercial purposes in 2016. Serbia is part of her native range, since she's one of the eastern subspecies of Hermann's.

[ChairmanPoo]

Actually... you're half wrong. I checked and it turns out there *are* wild tortoises in Poland

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reptiles_of_Poland

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_pond_turtle


I'm surprised. I assumed the weather would not be turtle-friendly

[Il Palazzo]

Actually... you're half wrong. I checked and it turns out there *are* wild tortoises in Poland

I never realised they lived here. How sneaky of them. They must be ninja turtles.

Something I don't understand, that I read on the wiki page (the Polish version) - it says that the turtle breathes air, but it winters burrowed in mud on the bottom of a lake. Now, I get hibernation, but surely, it can't hold its breath for 5 months?

edit: this was actually quite easy to find. When hibernating they 'breathe' through their butts. The more you know...

[LordBaal]

So, wild Poland turtle appears!

Wild Poland turtle uses breathe through the anus.

[TD1]

Surely they could still just breathe through their mouths? Breathing through the anus just seems unnecessary.

[King Zultan]

Some people talk out their anus, so I don't think its hard to believe that they also breath out it.