Gopher Tortoise, Part Deux

As Yogi Berra would say -- It's deja-vu all over again.

Many of you will remember that I posted a video recently (back when I was still using Facebook as a blogging platform) of a gopher tortoise getting all worked up about my GoPro Session 4 camera. I thought he mistook the camera for another male gopher tortoise and proceeded to try to intimidate it with head bobs. But with the tiny brain a gopher tortoise posesses the possibilities are pretty limited. Fight, mate, eat. That's about the extent of why he would approach anything.

Gopher Tortoise

I was hiking a few days ago and came upon another gopher tortoise beside the road. My immediate question was whether he would act the same way as the earlier tortoise or would he ignore the camera. My guess was that he would ignore it. This was too far away for it to be the same tortoise. So how would a different tortoise react?

So I put the 2 inch cube shape on the ground about 5 feet away from the tortoise as before and walked away to see what would happen. Well, from the fact that I'm posting it you've probably guessed the original tortoise behavior wasn't unique.

So what was going on? I spend an hour or so reading on gopher tortoise behavior to figure it out. I found lots of references and youtube videos of mating behavior where head bobbing starts the ball rolling. But I'm not finding any reference of it being used by one male to intimidate another. When fighting they keep their head tucked in tight to protect it. 

I'm pretty sure both tortoises in the videos are males from the bony projection from the bottom shell, also called a plastron.

Female Tortoise?

In the original post I guessed that the behavior was a male trying to intimidate another perceived male. I've changed my mind on that. I've come to the conclusion that he was probably looking for a date and the small, dark and boxy camera was about the best chance he had today. The tortoise equivalent of beer goggles.

I've posted the original video at the bottom. Note the similarities of the approach and head bobbing.

So does anybody have a scholarly reference to gopher tortoises using head bobbing to intimidate? I'm talking high quality reference -- post on facebook, youtube video, random musing in some corner of the internet or the like.

Any thoughts on the subject appreciated.