How Is It To Train Giant Turtles and Tortoises?

They call them the dinosaurs of this day and age. They are portrayed as the wise characters in cartoons. Of course I’m talking about Turtles and Tortoises I have the privilege to work with a couple different species so far. Many people ask me about the amount of species I’ve worked with by now and how I deal with the species differences. Great question! What I tent to do is not necessarily look at the species differences itself. I request first what the animals eat, what the keepers think works best to then start a bit of observing. 

I like to look at action reaction. Often you can see the animals respond to their environment in different ways. But at the end of the day they do so for comfortable outcomes. Each animal does this regardless of the species. If you observe closely the question that I ask myself all the time is what is the animals response after a change in environment occurred. Might this be a conspecific who did something, might this be an added food source or the keeper who walked up to the animal. Animals respond continuously to their environment and this is what I’m trying to pick up. 

What are the training goals?

Whenever we work with a new species we ask the animal care professionals the goals they want to reach. In the case of these gentle giants the goal always seems to be to increase their cooperative care behaviours. Especially with the land animals such as the Aldabra tortoises. We look into if the environment we created for them functions properly for them. We can do this by looking at how deep the heat lamps penetrate their shell or see how their blood measurements are to find out more about what we provide to them and if the changes are working well. 

10 Tortoises in 1 exhibit

Now imagine you have a facility which has been changed over the last year drastically by keepers who are very passionate about these animals. There are 10 tortoises who are not trained much. Where do we even start? Well like with any species let’s first connect ourselves with some associative learning to something good. We are going to teach them to eat from our hand. Because our main goal is to teach them to go onto a scale and to get a blood sample. On top of that we like to touch them as well. The funny part is that some tortoises really enjoy the touching while others seem to not like it to much. This is what you see with more species such as fur seals.

With the ones that already do accept touching we directly start the blood sample process by using the touching as a reinforcer. Mind you we must be sure they see this as a reinforced. To be able to know we just have to look at the progress of the behaviour to measure if it is reinforcing. When you touch the individual who seem to be good with touching they stretch their neck exactly where we want to take the sample. Any motion or change we apply we reinforce with tactile. This works quite well. The beautiful part is that each of them really have their own personality. One is making faster progression than the other which is no different with other species. The goal is to teach each individual the understanding of “you do something to get something”. If this is in place you actually can go a bit “faster” in training. But remember even a sloth is faster than a tortoise. 

Skin Challenges for Blood Sample Training

The next challenge is that when we are finally at the process of breaking the skin with a needle that the skin is life thick leather. It’s not just an in and out process with the needle. Its an push harder to get it in and then pull the needle out. This is quite something so when they accept this part it will be easier to go into the next approximation which is the duration. 

Big Guy the Loggerhead Turtle

Imagine you need to do this with a loggerhead turtle. Currently I’m working at Sea World Australia where we have a green turtle and a loggerhead turtle which are doing great in our training program. The loggerhead just had its first blood sample taken voluntarily and let me explain you how this went. The trainer was quite creative. She used some steps used for us as a station where she trained the turtle to park itself. Mind you before this training the animal is already trained for a recall and for tactile. All we had to figure out is to stretch the neck out. The neck of a loggerhead turtle is a bit different than an Aldabra tortoise. It is a loth thicker and the length of the neck is far less than the Aldabra’s. 

With some creative thinking the trainer decided to add 2 sticks to her platform. This allowed the animal to put their neck between the 2 sticks to be able to train the animal to stretch its neck a bit better. This is exactly what happened. With the same technique as with the tortoises we started the process of desensitising the turtle for the needle.

As a first approximation to the needle we use a touch with our hands first. Then we use a finger poke. Normally after this I like to either work duration with the poke or start using the process of using a different device which is a bit sharper such as a fork which doesn’t penetrate the skin just yet. We use the veterinarian to desensitise as well. With great team work she came up with some important details. For the vet to work safely and not to contaminate the neck she wanted to have the neck more out of the water. Therefore the station was to low. Easy fix because the trainer just looked an antecedent arrangement in her environment and added some stones under the station to lift the station higher up which allows the neck to get out of the water. Problem solved!

First Needle prick

After this approximation we now started the further process of the needle. We discovered that we could jump some steps cause of the strength of the tactile trained previously. 3 sessions later we started the needle process. Same as the tortoises breaking the skin wasn’t that easy. A lot of pressure on the needle which made our first plan fail. Not because of the animal but because of bending the needle while trying to break the skin. Eventually with the correct length and gauge it worked. A big approximation but he did fantastic. 

From here it was time for further duration and movement. It is incredibly difficult to find the veins. After 2 practices we got it. Our first blood sample voluntarily from a loggerhead turtle. 

Any animal can learn new skills regardless of the species!

We believe any animal can learn new skills. It is up to us how open we are to the differences in species. How we can create environments and plans focussed on the individuals in front of us. From there it is only upwards. In both cases the trainers where incredible to work with. They thought me that success doesn’t just depend on the animal but very much on the personality of the trainer. In both cases the trainers were sponges, taking in all information presented to them and taking this on board coming up with great ideas. With veterinarians helping out and working together with us created a strong area where we all could be successful and increase the animals welfare!