Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am a new leopard tortoise owner and have a question about their shell patterns. Most of the leopards I see have little black dots within each shell plate. Mine has no dots / cirlces on it's shell. Just the normal black ring outline and then plain yellow/cream center. Is this a good pattern? Not sure what is considered interesting or good genetics in leopards. Can someone fill me in on the different patterns / morphs.

Thanks,
Jeff

Ide assume you are talking about a hatchling. As they grow they get the spotted look. Some of the "blonde" leapords dont have the spots (or not as much) instead its an offwhite color. If you look at the classifieds on this site you can get a good idea of what they look like. Most hatchlings look as you described. Once they begin to grow you will get a better idea of the color pattern.

Search back in the forum because I always get this mixed up. The two subspecies of leopards can only be distinguished as babies exactly by that black dot pattern. The two subspecies are pardelis and babcocki. One has 0 or 1 dot in each scute and the other has 1 or more dots in each scute. So if you have one dot in some scutes its no help. but if you have none at all or 2 or more you can identify which you have. The difference is basically in how big they will grow to. Look back in the posts because keepers a lot smarter then me will know which pattern goes with which species. Tom

I think its Pardalis has 1, 2 or 3 spots and Babcocki has 0 or 1 but like I say I get it mixed up a lot

Thanks for the responses. The other hatchlings have 1 spot and mine has 0. So hopefully that solves it by the spot logic.
Thanks again.

LeonardoRenzo is my baby 4 year old babcocki. He has a perfect little heart shape pattern on his front most scute while the others are odd shaped hearts as if one dot melts into the scute.