Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello everyone, i caught my juvenille sulcata eating his own poop today fresh after he squeezed it out. I have read that this is common with tortoises and is nothing to worry about, it was just unpleasant. I had just fed him like 5 minutes before, he ate a little, pooped, at the poop, then ate some more. He had a nice plate of chopped grasses and dandelion, why would he choose poop over that?

One of my redfoot hatchlings frequently tries to do this, and occasionally succeeds. My friend was saying that pet rabbits do this as well and this is the reason- cows have mutiple stomachs to process the grass that they eat, and rabbits don't, so they eat their poo and the second time around they are able to get more from it than the first, and then when it comes out the second time it is a different texture and color. I had never heard this before and don't know if it is true or not, but I wondered if it might be a similar reason. My other thought on this issue is that maybe in the wild they eat it to remove the smell of them for the sake of predators or something. None the less, it is considered "normal" although it seems strange to us!

My 8 y.o. Sulcata has always eaten her poop. The amazing thing is that the 2nd run completely digests what wasn't processed the 1st time through.

I suspect that this behavior is a defense mechanism which the tortoise species evolved to compensate for its slow movement and lack of ability to outrun predators drawn by feces dropped to hunt down prey.