Tortoise
A land turtle, herbivorous, and slow in every sense: some species outlive the people who buy them. The shell is fused to the spine, so it cannot leave it.
Overview
Tortoises are land turtles that eat plants, and the two things that decide whether one works as a pet are how big the species gets and how long it lives. An African spurred tortoise, sold as a palm sized hatchling, reaches 36 to 50 kg and averages 54 years in captivity.
That is a farm animal in a suburban garden, and it is the commonest way tortoise keeping goes wrong. Smaller species exist and are the right answer for most people, which makes the species on the label the single most important thing about the purchase.
Temperament
Slow, single minded and more individual than they look. Tortoises learn a routine, recognise the person who brings food, and push at fences with a persistence that is genuinely hard to fence against.
They are not social and do not need company, and males housed together fight and ram. They are also not handling animals. A tortoise held up is a tortoise off the ground with no way to control where it is going, which it does not enjoy.
Care and grooming
Grasses and weeds, high in fibre and low in protein, with very little fruit. The arid species in particular are adapted to poor, dry forage, and a diet rich in fruit and protein produces fast growth and a lumpy, pyramided shell that never flattens back out.
UVB is required if kept indoors. Outdoors in real sunlight the problem solves itself, which is one more argument for an outdoor pen wherever the climate allows it.
Living and exercise
An outdoor pen, larger than seems necessary, with sun, deep shade, a shallow water dish they can walk into, and a barrier that goes below ground because they dig. Spurred tortoises in particular burrow to escape heat and cold, and a pen that only exists above ground does not hold one.
Humidity is by species and it runs from arid to genuinely humid, so the species decides the setup rather than the other way round. Fifty years and up is a normal expectation, which means the animal outlives the arrangement it arrived under.
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