Desert Tortoise: Fact Or Fiction?

DESERT TORTOISE: FACT OR FICTION?

Students will enjoy this GETTING STARTED 4. When it gets too hot outside the fun team game that Divide your class into two teams. Have desert tortoise goes underground. will determine who each team gather in separate parts of TRUE. It will dig a burrow with its knows the most about the classroom, and then have each one front legs and will stay there when the Sonoran Desert come up with a desert tortoise related it’s too hot or too cold. It will also hibernate in its burrow. The burrow tortoise. name for their team. The instructor will will often be made in the bank of a read each of the statements below, ad- wash or under a bush. dressing the statements to both teams.

Each team is given a one minute hud- 5. By counting the number of rings on the shell of a tortoise you can Arizona Science dle time to decide whether the state- guess it’s approximate age. Standards: ment is a fact or whether it is fiction. TRUE. Draw a picture of a tortoise SC04-S3C1-01 After the team responds, the instructor, using the information given on this shell on the board like this: (It does SC03-S3C1-02 not have to be complete, just give sheet, tells the class about any infor- them the idea.) SC04-S4C1-02 mation that the students may have not come up with on their own. The score SC04-S4C4-02 for each team is kept on the board.

QUESTIONS

1. A desert tortoise will climb out of

its shell when it grows too big and will move into a large one. As you draw it explain that the shell FALSE. Its shell is its backbone and is made up of many sections and that ribs and grows with the rest of the ani- very year a new ring is added to eve- mal. ry section. During the winter, when the tortoise is hibernating the shell 2. The desert tortoise never needs to stops growing. Because of the yearly drink water. grow-stop pattern, one ring is added every year. Usually though, the rings FALSE. It gets most of its water from on the sections of older tortoises food that it eats but still needs to occa- have been worn down and you can sionally drink water. no longer count all of them. 3. Desert tortoises think that it’s fun- 6. The desert tortoise has many ny to urinate on people. sharp teeth. FALSE. They collect water in their FALSE. It is toothless, like all turtles. bladder and save it for their body to Its large tongue helps push food back use when no other water is available. into its mouth. When a stranger picks up a wild tor- 7. It is a vegetarian. toise, it gets scared and will often loose its saved water. This can cause the tor- TRUE. It eats mostly grasses, and toise to die of dehydration if it doesn’t when they are in season, flowers and find any more water to drink soon. cactus fruit.

DESERT TORTOISE: FACT OR FICTION? 8. The average desert tortoise lives to 12. If you really want to have a be 100 years old. desert tortoise in your yard you

FALSE. Not quite that old, but they might be able to adopt one from the Desert Museum. can get to be 80 years old, about as long as the average human. TRUE. The Desert Museum has a “tortoise orphanage”. Any desert 9. Cutting into the shell of a desert tortoise that has lived as a pet should tortoise won’t hurt it. not be returned to the wild because they might be carrying a respiratory FALSE. Remember that the shell is disease and we don’t want them to live, growing tissue – bone, skin, blood infect wild tortoises. Since they can and nerve – and if it is cut it hurts. It is live many years, sometimes they not dead like our fingernails. Also, a outlive their “owners”, so we are a cut shell can cause infections to pass place that they can be returned to instead of the wild. We then find into the tortoises internal body cavity, good homes for them. and this could lead to the animal’s death. 13. The very favorite foods of a pet desert tortoise are bananas, toma- 10. It is illegal to collect wild desert toes and lettuce. tortoises. FALSE. These are very unhealthy TRUE. In Arizona the tortoise is a pro- foods for a tortoise and will cause tected species. It is not an endangered the animal to die, if these are the on- species, but if it did not have the law to ly foods that it is offered. protect it, it would probably be over 14. An adult Sonoran Desert tor- collected, and this could lead to it be- toise can weigh as much as 30 coming very rare and even endangered. pounds. 11. Building homes, schools and FALSE. On average adult Sonoran roads for people are not a problem Desert Tortoise weigh between 10- for tortoises. 15 pounds. FALSE. The biggest problem that de- 15. Desert tortoise spend most of sert tortoises face are habitat loss and their time under the ground in a burrow. habitat fragmentation. They are sometimes hit by cars while crossing roads TRUE. They are one of the most elu- and by off-road vehicles while they are sive inhabitants of the desert, spend- ing up to 95% of its time under- out and about in the desert. ground to escape the heat of the summer and the cold of winter. 16. Desert tortoise are not able to make any sounds. FALSE. They are able to make hiss- es, pops and poink sounds, perhaps as fear and distress calls. Males to grunt when mating.