Tortoise head bobbing followed by wrestling - what's this all about?

hatrickpatrick

This will seem like an odd question, but a friend linked me to this on Facebook the other day, basically a video of two tortoises encountering eachother, facing eachother just bobbing their heads up and down for a minute or so before head-locking and wrestling for the rest of the video.

Anyone have any idea what they're doing and why? Is the head bobbing thing some kind of bizarre warning dance? Do they usually wrestle like this for seemingly no reason?

Know this thread is odd as it's not about my own pet, I've just been intensely curious about this since I saw the video, it's one of the strangest animal behaviors I've seen!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZdlGJhPhv4

Action starts around 30 seconds in, up until then he's just chasing the dog

Ms2011

It's the same as 2 male stags locking horn for control over a territory.
The head bobbing is for intimidation, when this doesn't solve things they go to wrestling. The object of the wrestling is to use ths bony plate under their chin to flip the opposition over onto his back. Whoever does this is the winner.

BetterThanThou

I've personally never known tortoises to do this, but, that said, I'm personally not interested in tortoises. Many species of lizards do this too, and as you assumed, it is somewhat of a "warning dance", it's also done to attract females as well.

hatrickpatrick

Ms2011 wrote: »

It's the same as 2 male stags locking horn for control over a territory.
The head bobbing is for intimidation, when this doesn't solve things they go to wrestling. The object of the wrestling is to use ths bony plate under their chin to flip the opposition over onto his back. Whoever does this is the winner.

Following such a battle, how does the flipee... "un-flip" himself?

Ms2011

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Following such a battle, how does the flipee... "un-flip" himself?

He doesn't always, if he's strong enough he'll rock & flip himself back over, if not he'll die in the desert heat!

tallus

Looks like a territorial dispute.