Reptile & Amphibian Forums

If a baby tortoise is only 2 inches big and gets shipped across country, chances are he/she will flip over upside down in the box at some point. Once a tort does this, can it flip back around on its own? I just imagine my tort doing an upside down swimming routine for hours while inside a Fedex box. Any thoughts?

Fred

I've been shipping for four years, and have only ever lost one tortoise, which was a small 2-3" indian star, but that may of been due to it was going for a cold climate (ohio) to a warmer (texas) and it was like march if i remember right and it was like 30 here and 70 there (learned alot since then), it was a hard loss but its been two years, I learned and i don't ship usually after oct. if i do ship, its something that will be able to handle a little coolness and i wait till the warmest day.

>>> but if the tortoise is flipped over in shipping, hopefully it isn't for long, just make sure there are arrows on the side of the box, and put like 'this side up' i pack my tortoises tight so they have no room to move, so if they were to be placed upside down, we could only hope for the best, i only ship DHL, i have heard bad stories but i've only ever had one problem, which might just be due to weather...

Andy
REdoFootMan@yahoo.com

It generally doesn’t hurt a tortoise to be upside down during shipping. The biggest problem is stress due to attempting to right itself. In the wild, being upside down can be a death sentence if the tortoise is in the hot sun (can overheat and die in less than an hour in the desert sun). If a tortoise cannot right itself then it may be exposed to predation and of course in time the tortoise would die of dehydration or starvation.

I have kept tortoises for over 40 years and have produced well over 10,000 babies of 15 different species. I have never had a problem due to a tortoise being upside down unless it was in the sun.

Thanks for the replies. That sets my mind at ease as far as shipping the tortoise goes. I'll stop being a worry wart now, thanks again.

Fred

When I received my baby hermann's it was on its back, the delivery man was holding the clearly marked box sideways, I wanted to say a few choice words to him, but didn't. The tortoise however was fine, stressed of course, but fine.