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| Sardinian Marginated Tortoise |
Today, The Grandma and her friends are spending their last day in Sardìnnia. It has been a fantastic travel and they have visited amazing places, incredible monuments and the most important, they have met nice and wonderful people. Sardinian people are very special and they are the reason that you feel in Sardìnnia like at home.
The Grandma has wanted to say goodbye to the Sardinian nation visiting one of its most spectacular treasures: the tortoises. The island is home of a great variety of reptiles, the most part of them, endemic species. They have visited Porto Conte Regional Natural Park, an awesome part of the island where these animals live free and enjoy their Mediterranean life.
Before visiting the tortoises, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Grammar 17).
More information: Present Perfect & Past Simple
Hermann's tortoise, Testudo hermanni , is one of five tortoise species traditionally placed in the genus Testudo, the others being the marginated tortoise or T. marginata, Greek tortoise, T. graeca, or common tortoise, Russian tortoise or T. horsfieldii, and Kleinmann's tortoise, T. kleinmanni or Egyptian tortoise.
Two subspecies are known: the western Hermann's tortoise or T. h. hermanni and the eastern Hermann's tortoise or T. h. boettgeri. Sometimes mentioned as a subspecies, T. h. peleponnesica is not yet confirmed to be genetically different from T. h. boettgeri.
The specific epithet, hermanni, honors French naturalist Johann Hermann. The subspecific name, boettgeri, honors German herpetologist Oskar Boettger.
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| Sardinian Marginated Tortoise |
Testudo hermanni can be found throughout southern Europe.
The western population, T. h. hermanni, is found in Catalonia, southern France, the Balearic islands, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, south and Tuscany.
The eastern population, T. h. boettgeri, inhabits Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Turkey and Greece, while T. h. hercegovinensis populates the coasts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Montenegro.
The western population, T. h. hermanni, is found in Catalonia, southern France, the Balearic islands, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, south and Tuscany.
The eastern population, T. h. boettgeri, inhabits Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Turkey and Greece, while T. h. hercegovinensis populates the coasts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Montenegro.
Hermann's tortoises are small to medium-sized tortoises from southern Europe. Young animals and some adults have attractive black and yellow-patterned carapaces, although the brightness may fade with age to a less distinct gray, straw, or yellow coloration. They have slightly hooked upper jaws and, like other tortoises, possess no teeth, just strong, horny beaks. Their scaly limbs are greyish to brown, with some yellow markings, and their tails bear a spur, a horny spike, at the tip. Adult males have particularly long and thick tails, and well-developed spurs, distinguishing them from females.
More information: Sardegna Turismo
The eastern subspecies T. h. boettgeri is much larger than the western T. h. hermanni, reaching sizes up to 28 cm in length. A specimen of this size may weigh 3–4 kg, T. h. hermanni rarely grows larger than 18 cm. Some adult specimens are as small as 7 cm.
The subspecies T. h. hermanni includes the former subspecies T. h. robertmertensi and has a number of local forms. It has a highly arched shell with an intensive coloration, with its yellow coloration making a strong contrast to the dark patches. The colors wash out somewhat in older animals, but the intense yellow is often maintained. The underside has two connected black bands along the central seam.
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| Sardinian Marginated Tortoise |
The coloration of the head ranges from dark green to yellowish, with isolated dark patches. A particular characteristic is a yellow fleck on the cheek found in most specimens, although not in all; T. h. robertmertensi is the name of a morph with very prominent cheek spots.
Generally, the forelegs have no black pigmentation on their undersides. The base of the claws is often lightly colored. The tail in males is larger than in females and possesses a spike. Generally, the shell protecting the tail is divided. A few specimens can be found with undivided shells, similar to the Greek tortoise.
More information: Hermanni Haven
Early in the morning, the animals leave their nightly shelters, which are usually hollows protected by thick bushes or hedges, to bask in the sun and warm their bodies. They then roam about the Mediterranean meadows of their habitat in search of food. They determine which plants to eat by the sense of smell. In captivity, they are known to eat dandelions, clover, and lettuce, as well as the leaves, flowers, and pods of almost all legumes. In addition to leaves and flowers, the animals eat small amounts of fruits as supplementary nutrition.
Around midday, the sun becomes too hot for the tortoises, so they return to their hiding places. They have a good sense of direction to enable them to return. Experiments have shown they also possess a good sense of time, the position of the sun, the magnetic lines of the earth, and for landmarks.
In the late afternoon, they leave their shelters again and return to feeding.
In late February, Hermann’s tortoises emerge from under bushes or old rotting wood, where they spend the winter months hibernating, buried in a bed of dead leaves.
In late February, Hermann’s tortoises emerge from under bushes or old rotting wood, where they spend the winter months hibernating, buried in a bed of dead leaves.
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| Sardinian Marginated Tortoise |
Immediately after surfacing from their winter resting place, Hermann’s tortoises commence courtship and mating. Courtship is a rough affair for the female, which is pursued, rammed, and bitten by the male, before being mounted. Aggression is also seen between rival males during the breeding season, which can result in ramming contests.
Between May and July, female Hermann’s tortoises deposit between two and 12 eggs into flask-shaped nests dug into the soil, up to 10 cm deep. Most females lay more than one clutch each season. The pinkish-white eggs are incubated for around 90 days and, like many reptiles, the temperature at which the eggs are incubated determines the hatchlings sex.
At 26 °C, only males will be produced, while at 30 °C, all the hatchlings will be female. Young Hermann’s tortoises emerge just after the start of the heavy autumn rains in early September and spend the first four or five years of their lives within just a few metres of their nests. If the rains do not come, or if nesting took place late in the year, the eggs will still hatch, but the young will remain underground and not emerge until the following spring. Until the age of six or eight, when the hard shell becomes fully developed, the young tortoises are very vulnerable to predators and may fall prey to rats, badgers, magpies, foxes, wild boar, and many other animals.
If they survive these threats, the longevity of Hermann’s tortoises is around 30 years. One rare record of longevity is 31.7 years. Compared to other tortoises, e.g. Testudo graeca, the longevity might be underestimated and many sources are reporting they might live 90 years or more.
The tortoise is very fond of water,
drinking large quantities, and wallowing in the mud…
When the tortoise arrives at the spring, quite regardless of any spectator, he buries his head in the water above his eyes, and greedily swallows great mouthfulls, at a rate of about ten in a minute.
Charles Darwin
