Animal Diaries Archive
The boys go on holidays...
23 March 2007
...well, across the path anyway. Igloo and Goliath, two of our Aldabran Giant Land Tortoises are spending a few weeks on hiatus in Harriet's old enclosure to give a chance to do some much needed landscaping in their old enclosure. You may ask why we need to move them to another enclosure just to do some landscaping. The thing is that Igloo and Goliath also fancy themselves as landscape gardeners as well although they much prefer the demolition side of things.
It takes roughly 400m of turf to cover their enclosure not to mention the hours of back-breaking effort - and it takes about 10 minutes for a tortoise to destroy it.So although they love to “help”, a few weeks away will give their enclosure a chance to return back to it’s former glory. We’ve also adopted a new approach for moving the boys rather than carrying the 150kg giants. A little bribery goes a long way! You can see in the picture that Goliath will do just about anything for some mulberry leaf. Both the boys quite happily followed Gemma (reptile volunteer) half way around the zoo before being led under the railing to their new temporary home.
Our Amazing Aldabran Tortoises
The Aldabran Tortoise is the largest species of land tortoise in the world. They can grow to roughly 1 metre tall and can weigh as much 300 kilograms. Their s ...more
Display Status
Our Amazing Aldabran Tortoise(s) are currently on display
