Rare western swamp tortoise returns to southern home
September 19, 2024 4:54 PM   Subscribe

Hopes for future hatchlings outside Perth as rare western swamp tortoise returns to southern home. An endangered tortoise that excited wildlife carers by surviving outside its only known habitats in Perth has returned home to its birthplace and site of a relocation trial in Western Australia's South West.

After shocking wildlife carers by surviving outside of its only known habitat, a rare western swamp tortoise has returned home to Western Australia's South West.

The endangered reptile, which is a type of turtle, was found near Northcliffe, 400km south of Perth, last year, an unexpected survivor of a 2018 reallocation program to see if the species could survive in other wetlands.

The turtle has spent months having its shell repaired at Perth Zoo.

Southern Forests Wildlife carer Pauline Hewitt said the turtle had now been returned to its original habitat.

"We walked her a long way into the wetland and she was so excited," she said.

"It was really exciting to see her come home and just to see her flapping her legs as we went to put her down in the water.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (7 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is a beautiful story. Thanks...
posted by Czjewel at 6:54 PM on September 19


I love this. Now i'm interested in what folks in Australia call a tortoise versus what we say in the US. That's a turtle to me.
posted by mollweide at 8:24 PM on September 19


I love this. Now i'm interested in what folks in Australia call a tortoise versus what we say in the
US. That's a turtle to me.


In Australia, if it likes living in freshwater swamps/rivers we call it a tortoise or a turtle;

if it likes living in the ocean, it's a turtle or a sea-turtle.

We don't have any purely-dry-land tortoises like the US deserts or the Galapagos islands does. (Well, there are some giant dry land tortoises in the zoo, but they're not native to Australia...)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:06 AM on September 20


That face! One happy lil gal. Thanks for posting!!
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:23 AM on September 20


Thanks, chariot pulled by cassowaries!
posted by mollweide at 6:12 AM on September 20


We don't have any purely-dry-land tortoises

Huh, that's kind of surprising given Australia's generous supply of dry areas, surprised none of them evolved toward it, like box turtles who are also dry land and even desert despite not being tortoises.
posted by tavella at 1:14 PM on September 20


Huh, that's kind of surprising given Australia's generous supply of dry areas, surprised none of them evolved toward it, like box turtles who are also dry land and even desert despite not being tortoises.

The niche for desert-thriving reptilian carnivores and reptilian scavengers is thoroughly filled by goannas - monitor lizards (lizards in the genus Varanus, the only extant genus in the family Varanidae.)

And it would be hard for a vegetarian tortoise/turtle with a hard shell to thrive in dry land Australia given how far you would potentially have to travel for food, and the metabolic costs of growing a shell and carrying a shell. Many of Australia's medium and large herbivores (including kangaroos and wallabies, but there are many others as well) have developed bounding two legs plus tail locomotion to enable them to cover the large distances required to find food in dry areas.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:48 PM on September 20


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