{"id":61,"date":"2011-10-30T22:01:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-30T22:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mother-natures-son.com\/blog\/?p=61"},"modified":"2012-12-23T14:39:49","modified_gmt":"2012-12-23T20:39:49","slug":"tortoise-identified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atp.dtn.temporary.site\/blog\/tortoise-identified\/","title":{"rendered":"Tortoise Identified"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I contacted Dr. Travis LaDuc at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.utexas.edu\/tmm\/tnhc\/\">Texas Natural History Collections<\/a> at the University of Texas at Austin for help with identifying the small tortoise I found last weekend.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s the Assistant Curator of Herpetology at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.utexas.edu\/tmm\/\">Texas Natural Science Center<\/a> and I thought he might be able to tell what I had. We heard him speak at a <a href=\"http:\/\/haysmn.org\/\">Hays County Master Naturalist<\/a> Chapter meeting earlier in the year.<\/p>\n<p>He was most gracious and responded almost immediately.<\/p>\n<p>He said he doesn&#8217;t think it&#8217;s a native and that we don&#8217;t have any native tortoises in Texas roughly north of the San Antonio Metropolitan area. His best guess is that it&#8217;s an <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/African_spurred_tortoise\">African spurred tortoise<\/a> (<i>Geochelone sulcata<\/i>), which is what I thought it might be too. Here&#8217;s a photo of a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AIsaacSulcata.jpg\">juvenile <\/a>and it does look similar.<\/p>\n<p>He said that a number of people keep these as pets in their backyards and some of them don&#8217;t realize what happens when you put a male and female together! Their incubation periods are something like 5 months, so it would be easy to overlook any juveniles.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been feeding it grass from the yard and also some carrots and lettuce. It seems to prefer the grass.<\/p>\n<p>It looks like I have a new pet!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I contacted Dr. Travis LaDuc at the Texas Natural History Collections at the University of Texas at Austin for help with identifying the small tortoise I found last weekend. He&#8217;s the Assistant Curator of Herpetology at the Texas Natural Science <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/atp.dtn.temporary.site\/blog\/tortoise-identified\/\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-tortoise"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tortoise Identified - Mother Nature&#039;s Son<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mother-natures-son.com\/blog\/tortoise-identified\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Art Arizpe\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/mother-natures-son.com\\\/blog\\\/tortoise-identified\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/mother-natures-son.com\\\/blog\\\/tortoise-identified\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Art Arizpe\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/mother-natures-son.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/42fbea868accea17ecfabb6cf1005d4a\"},\"headline\":\"Tortoise Identified\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-10-30T22:01:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-12-23T20:39:49+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/mother-natures-son.com\\\/blog\\\/tortoise-identified\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":219,\"commentCount\":0,\"keywords\":[\"tortoise\"],\"articleSection\":[\"blog\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/mother-natures-son.com\\\/blog\\\/tortoise-identified\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/mother-natures-son.com\\\/blog\\\/tortoise-identified\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/mother-natures-son.com\\\/blog\\\/tortoise-identified\\\/\",\"name\":\"Tortoise Identified - 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