Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Silly question:

I was wondering if torts could develop it after they reach adulthood. I've never had a problem with my 2 and take good care of them, but I have wondered if it could start later in life or is it just when they go through juvie growth spurts?

Any time I see a photo of pyramiding I double check the girls and have never seen any sign of it. They are both in their mid twenties and are full grown.

Just wondering

Angela

No such thing as a silly question.

They won't pyramid after they've reached adult size and stop growing but they can get metabolic bone disease (MBD) at any age if for some reason they stop getting a good healthy diet to eat.
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PHRatz

It is commonly believed that tortoises and reptiles in general continue to grow until the day they die. The rate can slow down drasticly but it does not normally stop.

As long as the tortoise is growing there is always the possibility of pyramiding. In older tortoises this appears as a space between the scutes. This is really defined in WC Chacos that have been in captivity for a while.

>>I was wondering if torts could develop it after they reach adulthood. I've never had a problem with my 2 and take good care of them, but I have wondered if it could start later in life or is it just when they go through juvie growth spurts?
>>
>>Any time I see a photo of pyramiding I double check the girls and have never seen any sign of it. They are both in their mid twenties and are full grown.
>>
>>Just wondering
>>
>>Angela
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Ed @ Tortoise Keepers
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

unlike most mammals reptiles usually don't have an old age stage of life. they just continue growing albeit slowly as they get older for their entire lives. that's one of the reasons most reptiles are so long-lived when compared to mammals. a few reptiles though, like anole lizards are still quite short-lived. i'm not really sure why this is.

A theory being widely believed doesn't make it so. I remember when it was widely believed that turtles/tortoises don't have any ears. It's a proven fact today that this is not true.
They do grow to a certain point then basically stop.
There is no reason to think that a normal adult would suddenly begin to pyramid but because MBD is related to pyramiding then it would be true that a normal adult can be afflicted with that disease.

It is a well proven observation that tortoises do grow to the day they die. The growth rate does slow down but it never really stops in a healthy animal.

Pyramiding might be observed in animals with MBD but it is not associated with the disease in the sense that if an animal is showing signs of pyramiding it has MBD. They are two totally separate conditions.

>>A theory being widely believed doesn't make it so. I remember when it was widely believed that turtles/tortoises don't have any ears. It's a proven fact today that this is not true.
>>They do grow to a certain point then basically stop.
>>There is no reason to think that a normal adult would suddenly begin to pyramid but because MBD is related to pyramiding then it would be true that a normal adult can be afflicted with that disease.
>>
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Ed @ Tortoise Keepers
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

You're both right. Some tortoises experience a growth cessation and live for a long time afterwards, while some continue to add (at the progressively slower pace) growth little by little till fairly near the end. This doesn't seem species-specific so much as it seems specimen-specific. Growth halting seems very common in some "turtle" lineages.

The meat of this sandwich is that, as we all know, every species of tortoise slows significantly at some point after maturity is attained. Once this stage of life is achieved, growth progresses slowly enough such that pyramiding should not prove much of an issue.

Pyramiding is related to an over/underabundance of certain factors that cause improper assimilation/formation of the units that build the shell (calcium crystals, etc.). The slower that building process is, the less noticable pyramiding will be. So, once the given animal's number one metabolic goal is no longer to get "big" quick, you see less and less of a trend towards pyramiding. This is why the greatest damage can be (and frequently is) done in the very early years.

Rate has little if anything to do with pyramiding. You can get smooth growth in rapidly grown tortoises and you can get pyramiding in tortoises grown slowly.

Apatite crystalline structure = majority of bone structure.

>>Pyramiding is related to an over/underabundance of certain factors that cause improper assimilation/formation of the units that build the shell (calcium crystals, etc.). The slower that building process is, the less noticable pyramiding will be. So, once the given animal's number one metabolic goal is no longer to get "big" quick, you see less and less of a trend towards pyramiding. This is why the greatest damage can be (and frequently is) done in the very early years.
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Ed @ Tortoise Keepers
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

What I was getting at is that pyramiding will be progressively less noticeable with age. Grow a scute an inch in a year, and if pyramiding occurs, you'll see it. Get the animal to a mature, mostly-grown age, where a scute might grow half an inch over a decade, and you won't notice the pyramiding nearly as much, even if it's proportional to what it might have been during quicker growth. This will be especially true if the animal had smoothe growth during the earlier years.

During those early years of rather rapid growth, it seems as though pyramiding has an easier time getting out of control, as we don't have as "much" time to notice it and try to reverse it. Thanks.