The Heat is On: Desert Tortoises & Survival (Part 1 of 4)

Other formats and full transcript can be found at: http://gallery.usgs.gov/videos/197, http://gallery.usgs.gov/videos/198, http://gallery.usgs.gov/videos/199, and http://gallery.usgs.gov/videos/200

Part 1 of 4:
A thirty minute television program exploring the world of the Mojave Desert Tortoise. Witness a newborn tortoise hatching from its shell and male tortoises engaging in territorial battle. Follow scientists as they track tortoises across the desert. Learn about the many threats to tortoise survival. Watch as scientists use new technologies such as GPS and habitat modeling to sort out the factors causing tortoise decline and to help guide the effort to recover the species.

Tortoises have lived across this southwest landscape for thousand's of years. Their adaptation to its extreme harsh environment is amazing: surviving ground temperatures greater than 130 degress Fahrenheit and able to live a year, or even two, without water. But now, the desert tortoise is in danger of extinction.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• GPS
• Mojave
• biology
• desert
• endangered
• environment
• extinction
• habitat
• research
• solar
• tortoise
• tracking
• wildlife
• usgs

[9DragonMaster]

@mgwilliams1000 WATCH THEM IN SLIGHTLY FAST FORWARD, THEY LOOK LIKE GODZILLA! Maybe I'll do a vid, I have a funny vid of a baby girl tortoise trying to bite a cats ear that was sniffing the tortoises plate of food.  =))) My larger male has created some pretty amazing burrows, I'll try to get a video of the hole and birm he made to battle water flow I'm guessing. We all love em

[mgwilliams1000]

@9DragonMaster I also have one. A very aged male I found walking down a sidewalk right in the middle of my town here in the Central Valley. He is now registered, and hibernating in the crawlspace below my house. I worked as a volunteer many years ago in the Navy at Ridgecrest with the BLM with these magnificent creatures. He is old and cantankerous as your granddad would be. I can't wait for him to come out in spring, he is a joy to watch.

[ZaMuMx]

thats sad... lets help maintain those beautiful tortoises

[ZenGuy12]

i might be wrong, but isnt it a bad idea to x ray the tortoises? give them and the eggs cancer

[9DragonMaster]

thats why you see the eggs have little X's on them!!!

[9DragonMaster]

they forgot to say you can't turn the egg from its original position!!!! if you flip the egg, the turtle can die!!!! I'm gonna go excavate our turtles dens, even though my female isn't of proper mating age??? i think the females have to be 10 or so?

[9DragonMaster]

i have a desert tortoise in california, socal, i have 1 male 1 female, the females prolly too young to mate, the male is ready.

[Akkkico]

welcome to Earth:)

[440876]

yay