Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I wonder if a tortoise like this would have survived in the wild? This little Hermanns was born with a
deformed shell & its left rear leg is club-footed. I've had it for over a year & it eats like a pig & holds
its own among the 3 larger Hermanns it lives with.
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DeeCee

I have a 16 year captive born Black Mt.Tort.that I call Quazimoto who also has a deforned shell from birth,kind of a hump back(no pics handy)He grew up HUGE and takes know greef from others.I had one born with NO EYES,that also eats and lives with others.I have some with many jumbled split scutes that I keep over the years.Tortoise people want Perfect Scute formation,where as snake people will pay more for odd shapped patterns.Ive got one I call a zig-zag Mt.Tortoise.Vic

No eyes? What causes that?

just one of thouse genetic hick-cups.I might have picked up the egg at some nano-time-warp.The cool part is that it LIVED.Its 3yrs. old now.At first I put it by itself,but it didn't do well untill I put it back with the group of siblings.It learned were the food was by finding other tortoises through contact, sound and sent when food was offered.Tears flow from a barly visable pour on its face,just like the typical tearing that occures in Mt.Torts when the humitity is a little low.Its a freeky beast.Hundreds of sibblings from the parents have been normal over the years.Still waiting for a albino.....with eyes of cource.Vic

Oh wow!! That's neat the little feller is doing good though.

Reminds me of our paint horses--there's a gene we call the "Lethal White" and when you breed 2 paint horses there's always a possiblity of getting a Lethal White baby. Generally they are born pure white and when this happens they have no colon so they are euthanized right away. I've seen a few horses that are blind/deaf as well. We've been breeding/showing paint horses for the past 15 years and in all that time only 2 lethal whites and that was a friend of ours.

oh, the poor thing -- i'm glad that it's doing well. i suppose that being born without eyes, like any other animal, it learned to compensate with its other senses.

what about the shape of its head? is it normal, or somewhat concave in the eye region?

reminds me of a bullfrog i found as a kid that only had the use of one eye, since it only had one eyelid. it seemed to have two eyes, however, because you could see the other one bulging beneath the skin as frogs' eyes do. wish i'd've taken a pic of him.

how sweet that you care for him; kudos for keeping a "special needs" tort! thanks for sharing his pic.

lots of people (you know the type, the so-called "collectors" who see their animals as objects and not living things) wouldn't want to have anything to do with anything less than a 100% perfect specimen.

Heres's another 'special needs' tortoise. Gimpy is a 3 year old Hermanns female who is blind in one eye.
The blind eye is larger than the other & behaves differently. The photos are of her extracting herself from
a hide rock she's outgrown.
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DeeCee

oh, what a sweetie -- look at how she's checking you out while you're taking her picture!