Volume: 53 Issue: 4
Year: 2022, Page: 545-550, Doi: https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.51966/jvas.2022.53.4.
Received: April 2, 2022 Accepted: May 24, 2022 Published: Dec. 31, 2022
Ethological studies in captivity play an important role in the conservation of animals. It also helps us to understand the human impact on fauna. On considering the behavioural aspects, birds and mammals have gained attention to some extent; but reptiles have not. Thisstudy attempts to focus on the behaviours of the Indian Startortoise(Geocheloneelegans) in captivity. The study species were observed in intra and interspecific enclosures. State and event behaviours were indexed. Though there is no species variation among star tortoises, the change in the behavioural pattern is due to their habitat differences. Locomotion, fighting, feeding, retreat and conspecific contact was found to be high in intraspecific enclosure. Basking and lying in the water was high in interspecific enclosure. Fighting was not observed in the interspecific enclosure during the study period. The resting period of star tortoises in interspecific enclosure was less when compared to intraspecific enclosure. Herpetofauna is a key component of an ecosystem and updating our knowledge via these kinds of ethological studies will benefit us in conserving the species in captivity.
Keywords: Geocheloneelegans, star tortoises, ethological studies, animal behaviour
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Copyright: © 2022 Aarthi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Aarathi,M., Shakila,L. and Janani,N., 2022. Observational Study on Captive Indian star tortoise (Geocheloneelegans) in intra and interspecific enclosures. J. Vet. Anim. Sci. 53(4):
DOI: https://doi.org/10.51966/jvas.2022.53.4