Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is this pattern very unique? is it special?

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Bennett

beardiedragon.com
Home of the Florida Orange

The tortoise in your photo exhibits one extra costal scute on the right side plus one extra central scute. Extra scutes are generally thought to be caused by stresses to the embryo during egg incubation. It is most commonly attributed to very high temoeratures, though some people believe excessive fluctuations in humidity may play a similar role. Unfortunately, turtles and tortoises with these aberrations are usually considered to be less valuable than those with the proper number and arrangement of scutes. On the plus side, many people have found that their animals with extra scutes matured into females, which tends to somewhat offset the negative feeling regarding the scute aberrations.

thank you very much for that info. I can see where it might be applicable. I house my redfoots outdoors. In November, I rearanged their pen and when I dug it up I found a bunch of eggs. I moved them to the incubator and so far 5 hatched out. 4 were normal and the last one was the odd one. It also hatched almost 3 weeks after the other 4.
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Bennett

beardiedragon.com
Home of the Florida Orange

My Hermanns was incubated to be female & has 4 scutes instead of 5 & one scute on the side is split. At age 3 I discovered he's male. He was sold at a discount because of this.
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he/she had MORE which is the envy of others...
...hope you love them just as much despites all that stereotypes...

>>Is this pattern very unique? is it special?
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>>Bennett
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>>beardiedragon.com
>>Home of the Florida Orange