03/07/2025
Tortoises have needs too !
Check out this amazing review from APBC Full CAB Member, Jane Williams' latest book!
Applied Animal Behaviour Science
Vol 290, September 2025, 106715
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article
Tortoise husbandry and welfare, Jane Williams (2025), p. 291, price £49.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781800623712.
Tortoise husbandry and welfare, Jane Williams (2025), p. 291, price £49.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781800623712. - ScienceDirect
This book could equally well have been titled 'Hundred ways to kill your tortoise'. Author Jane Williams makes awfully clear how the massive lack of information on tortoises' needs has led to a great variety of health problems and other causalities leading to the tortoises' early death. That there are still so many tortoises alive as pets is nothing short of a miracle. The poor information that tortoise keepers have is largely due to the absence of information on how to keep them in a proper manner. This book fills that gap, and should be mandatory material for anyone caring for tortoises or turtles.
The uncomfortable truth is that I was one of those poorly informed owners. Not knowing anything about turtles, I got a small red-eared terrapin (Trachemys scripta elegans) for my sixth birthday. Within a week, she had managed to escape the enclosure in true turtle-fashion. About 20 years later, my other terrapin went forever missing as she climbed the garden fence to make a lightning-fast escape into the marshland across the road. Who had thought that these unflexible shelled animals could climb so high up in the bushes! I knew that I did not provide them with the best care, but I only learned how bad it was after reading this book.
First of all, what is a tortoise? In some languages these creatures with shells on their back are all called turtles or all called tortoises, but in English there is an important distinction. Turtles, tortoises and terrapins are not the same. They all belong to the group of Chelonia, but turtles live mostly in the water while terrapins spend part of their time in the water and part of their time on land, as explained in Chapter 1. Tortoises are the ones that live on the land. The book is about tortoises, but from my experience as a former terrapin owner, I see large similarities in the description of their behaviour.
As I learned from this book, the odd behaviour of my shelled pets is unfortunately very common in the too tight captive environment. Tortoises apparently walk many kilometers a day and therefore will seek the boundaries of any territory. They are also unexpectedly skilled climbers, which makes them notorious escape artists (as described on p. 32). The book has a strong applied relevance as each year hundreds of thousands of wild-caught and captive bred species are traded, legally or illegally. As described in the chapter on the 'past, present and future' of tortoise keeping, they are popular pets despite their unsuitability as pet species. Williams makes clear that tortoises are not domesticated, and that they are therefore not suitable to keep in small enclosures as pets. A common sentence in the book, in various wording is: "The damage that can be caused [to the animal, Ed.] is significant, and in some cases fatal" (p. 38), illustrating the difficulties in keeping tortoises healthy.
The book is mostly practical in nature and provides an excellent guide on how to keep various species of tortoises. Chapters focus on the natural behaviour, important elements in the environment, nutrition and health. Williams emphasizes that behaviour is the main indicator of welfare, especially feeding behaviour (p. 79), and that behavioural changes are the first signs of stress (p. 132) (see also Warwick et al., 2013). She explains that tortoises have limited ability to express themselves but she provides a long list of behaviours that tortoises use to express their emotions (p. 133). I was positively surprised to see chapters on emotional states and social behaviour, with a focus on positive emotional states. Chapter 9 even addresses the question 'What is a happy tortoise?' (p. 132). The conclusion is, however, that there is still a dire need for more research, and that positive emotional states are yet to be defined for tortoises.
Williams also gives due attention to animal cognition. She gives extraordinary examples of learning in tortoises, such as training for voluntary blood draws in Galapagos tortoises using their natural 'finch response' (Bryant et al., 2016). Tortoises have also been trained to solve spatial choice tasks on a touch screen (Red-footed tortoises; Mueller-Paul et al., 2014), which in complexity surpasses some of the research done on domesticated species. The book could therefore make an excellent spin-off into 'How to train your turtle' (aka Dragon).
It is clear that tortoises are in many ways still misunderstood. Williams explains that there are many different species of tortoises and they can vary enormously in their behaviour and needs. Chapter 10 describes the social interactions, but also outlines that many species are solitary. It is one of the striking pieces of information that is essential to know but somehow has largely been ignored in tortoise keeping. She also explains that social behaviour is influenced by dominance relationships (hierarchy) and familiarity. Therefore it is clear, as the author writes, that the social environment of tortoises is much more complex than previously realized (p. 143). The role of the human in tortoises’ social life is yet to be studied further. Studies are done on human-tortoise relationships (e.g. Learmonth, 2020) and such contact can act as a positive reinforcer (Learmonth et al., 2021). However, the author also writes that it may in some cases be the tortoise’s response to anticipation for food rather than affection for a specific caretaker.
Another essential piece of information is the explanation of hibernation, or actually brumation which is the appropriate term for ectotherms (Wright and Raiti, 2019). Williams explains that many tortoise species do not brumate in their natural habitat and should not be allowed to do so in captivity. Brumation, if appropriate for the species, should not last longer than eight weeks – not a whole winter. The author’s advice is that if you are unsure about whether your specific species brumates, then it is better to not allow them to do so as this can be detrimental for their health. Again, the brumation practices that exist are one of the many ways to shorten the tortoise’s lifespan.
Overall, it is clear from the text that the author is an absolute expert and has a longstanding expertise in working with a great variety of tortoises. This results in an engaging text with lots of real-life examples and many photos (all in colour). Some points for improvement are the overlap in information between the chapters. However, this also makes the chapters stand-alone well. The short abstract to each chapter could have been left away, as these are less well written than the main text and thereby do not give a good reflection of the quality of the chapters. From the book it is clear that tortoises should actually not be sold as pets. However, if they are sold, then they should come with this book as mandatory guide for tortoise keeping.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Irene Camerlink: Writing – original draft.
