No doubt Ratz! I was going to get a picture of my baby luteolae gobbling up a piece of tomato, but I've been painfully lazy with the picture taking lately.

Young luteola and ornata are opportunists...they'll eat whatever they can. My comment on their diets in a previous post was in regards to wild turtles. In the wild, they are primarily insectivorous. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that insects are their most abundant choice of menu items.

Interestingly, I purchased some two year old luteola from a breeder in Florida. He has a captive population that he allows to breed freely outdoors. The babies are not given any special care. He claims that he feeds them a variety of food items, including fruits and veggies. When I got them acclimated into their pen, they would only eat living prey items. Try as I might, they would not accept anything that didn't move. I then posted a question on this forum, and someone recommended prickly pear cactus fruit. They ate it with impunity! Since then, they've agreed to try other things. In fact, I got them to eat hibiscus flowers for the first time yesterday. I just think that they were so accustomed to eating only what they could catch in the guy's pen, considering that they had to compete with robust adults. They probably eeked out a living on pill bugs, one of the only living items that most of my adult turtles ignore.

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