Tortoise Fun Facts

Depending on the species and its size, a tortoise can travel anywhere between 300 meters to 100+ kilometres in a day. Giant tortoises are notoriously slow travellers while smaller, pet tortoises can travel much farther as pacing around is a natural behaviour for them.

All tortoises start out as these tiny, cute little tanks. Many can easily fit in the palm of your hand. Eventually, though, they can grow to be hulking, heavy, lumbering creatures. This, of course, varies on the species of tortoise that you get, where it came from in the world, and its health as it grows.

Tortoises and turtles can make excellent classroom pets for certain kids. They require some specialized preparation, but once they are established in the classroom, they are fun to care for and can provide a wide variety of valuable lessons to children.

Pet tortoises are often touted as living an impressive 50 to 100 years or more. However, scientists believe that even older tortoises could be wandering around in the wild.

To help you pick the right tortoise for you, we’ve put together this handy list of the best and easiest tortoises to care for.

Tortoises cannot carry weight on their shells. As hardy as they are, they’re not meant to carry things around. Putting extra weight on a tortoise shell can hurt them as they are not designed to be pack animals.

A tortoise and a turtle cannot mate to produce viable offspring. They are genetically incompatible. Even if a tortoise and a turtle where helped to mate by scientific intervention, the offspring would be prone to significant health problems.

Tortoises are reptiles because they have scales and dry skin, they are cold-blooded, and they are descended from dinosaurs.