These are just some observations I've made with my trio of russian tortoises that I thought everyone here might find interesting.

I kind of did an experiment on how human interaction affects tortoise health and behavior. For about a week, I interacted with my torts regularly, by taking them out of their enclosures, taking them outside everyday, checking on them regularly, opening enclosure doors regularly, and moving them closer to the food dish at feeding time. What I noticed was that they hid in the corners most of the time, and only ate everyother day, if that.

This past week, since I've had college orientations anyways, I wanted to see how they would act with almost no human interaction. I put food in in the morning (usually before their lights even turned on) and I took it out at night. Nothing more. What I noticed was that they at a ton of food everyday, I found signs of activity all over their enclosures (new holes dug, and overall some new landscaping in the cage), and today when I am home, I did the same thing (just put the food dishes in), and within 30 seconds, everyone was feeding, which is a big change from before, when it would take up to 3-4 hours before all of them started to eat.

So my conclusion is that we underestimate the affect of stress on these little creatures. Granted, they're going to need to get used to going outside though. This will be easier for them though because I just finished my escape-proof outdoor tortoise enclosure. All that's left is to put about 1000 pounds of topsoil in.

I think that definately if they are very longterm with you, your results will be different. I'm working with two adult females that I recently aquired (one only about a month of so ago, and the other about 3 months ago), and one juvi male, that I've been raising from a hatchling since november. I think that over the next few years they will be less apt to going off feed when I have to mess with them. I'm hoping that by then they'll be spending most of their time outdoors too though.

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