Tortoises & Their Stress: A Mini-Series

[Silhouette]

(Couldn't resist the silly title!)

I have to ask: why are tortoises a "walkthrough-friendly animal" when they're essentially stressed 24/7 because of people walking through their habitat. No matter how much hard shelter you give them, their stress drops extremely fast as soon as they're in sight of the guests.

Now normally this might not be an issue. I had water buffalo that would drop pretty quickly with their stress. The difference is that they could quickly run to shelter and hide, so they didn't stay stressed out for too long.

It takes way too long for tortoises to find shelter, which ends up with either:

A) they just hang out around where their shelter is in the habitat, which makes a walkthrough a bit pointless, or

B) you have to put so many hiding spots in the habitat that, again, makes it pointless for guests to even walk through in the first place.

I just feel for their speed of movement, tortoises get stressed way too quickly. I've never made a walkthrough habitat with them because of that reason. I suppose you could put other animals into the enclosure to make it "worth it", but by then you may as well just put tortoises separate.

Having their stress decrease at a slower speed would fix this issue a lot, I believe... Unless most people don't find this to be an issue, and it really is just a matter of filling the habitat with hidey-holes?

 

[Dae]

I think it's the same for all walk-through friendly animals. I made a walk-through habitat for lemurs, and they were constantly stressed with protesters showing up... And yes they can hide faster than tortoises, but overall they were constantly in the red, with a few seconds in the green in between. Until I researched one-way glass and set my walk-through habitat into a false walk-through by walling 90% of the path inside the habitat... It's ugly and break the purpose of a walk-through but after that I had almost never stressed animals again...

Animals set as friendly with humans should not be stressed by humans (or a lot more slowly).

 

[Aiste]

That is a bad decision in coding, I think. Or they simply forgot to evaluate the peep-friendly animals' behavior.
I had a beautiful walk-in habitat with lemurs. Unusable.

 

[Dae]

Or if it's a matter of number of people inside because it would seem normal that it's not the same for animals between getting in contact with 10 people and 100 people at the same time, then add a management tool linked to the guest door so we can limit the number of people inside. It would create waiting files, but adding managing features in a management game is way better than not being able to manage anything and be forced out of an option.

 

[Krumm]

I think to get rid of the stress issue it is important to shield the shelters from the view. I do this with plants or maybe small hills, that allow the animals to get away from the visitors. Also the habitat has to be big enough, to allow for some pivacy.
As an addition i also use signs, that tell the people to be quiet and not to disturb the animals.
I hold a big family of stress free tortoises that way. I also have a walkthrough habitat with aardvarks, that also are quite happy.
The Animals can get close to the visitors, if they have some plants to hide under is my experience.

 

[Roxxsmom]

I've had issues with the tortoises getting stressed, even in habitats that aren't walkthrough. I put up the do not disturb signs, but it makes not the slightest difference in the noise created by the guests. I've used the ambience speakers to play rainforest sounds, but those don't help. And of course I've used one-way glass, but that doesn't help either. Aside from making the tortoise enclosure so huge the guests complain about not being able to see the animals, I don't know what else I can do.

The funny thing is, I can recall going to the San Diego zoo and visiting a Galapagos tortoise exhibit where you could walk right up to the fence and look at a tortoise three feet away, and the animals seemed just fine with this.

With lemurs, I find that any elevated viewing path or platform looking down into the enclosure stresses them, and walk in enclosures never work. I'm guessing they still need to adjust the algorithm or something. Again, I don't recall lemurs at zoos I've visited acting especially shy when there were lots of people.