Are you ready for marginated tortoise baby photos?

They hatched! I'm talking about my marginated tortoise hatchlings.

The eggs had incubated for 61 days at 88.2F before the first signs of pipping became apparent. Here's one two hours after pipping:

Four eggs out of the clutch of 10 had "chalked" (an external opacity of the egg shell that is usually associated with egg-fertility) within only a day or two of deposition, and now one of them was actually hatching.

Fortunately, the remaining three chalked eggs also hatched within the next two days. Here's one at two days after hatching:

I was rather excited about the event, for it was not only the first time I had hatched marginated tortoises, Testudo marginata, but in so doing I had laid to rest the long held tenet that a period of hibernation was necessary to successfully breed this species.

You see, because they are maintained outside year round in Florida and provided with heated winter quarters (accessible when the tortoises choose to use them), my breeders underwent no period of dormancy. Yet viable eggs were produced and healthy babies hatched.

While marginated tortoises are certainly capable of undergoing lengthy periods of hibernation, it would seem that this period of dormancy is not an actual necessity for breeding success.

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.