Do Tortoises Need Toys? (+What You Can Do Instead)

Sometimes when you look at your tortoises, it might seem like it’s completely bored, and that might actually be the case, tortoises can get bored. So a question arises, do tortoises need toys? As there must be something that you can do for your tortoise to make things a little more exciting.

Tortoises don’t enjoy traditional pet toys, instead, they enjoy climbing, hiding, and digging. Instead of toys they need, rocks, logs, a good amount of substrate, and caves in their environment, as they will provide more entertainment than any toy.

So you can get some toys for your turtle, but not in the traditional sense. Instead of a toy that they can chew or chase, they would much rather have something that they can climb onto. So let’s take a closer look at what kind of toys you can get for your turtle, and what other things you can do to make things more interesting.

What Toys Tortoises Like

Tortoises don’t really enjoy traditional pet toys like balls or disks. They are more attracted to things like rocks, and logs.

This is because tortoises don’t like to run after things, or play fetch, instead, they like to climb on things, even if it might not seem so, in the wild tortoises climb on top of things all the time, and they do it because they enjoy it, not because they have to.

So, instead of getting your tortoises a ball, get it a rock that it can climb.

Other things that tortoises enjoy are digging and hiding. While hiding, in particular, might not seem like a fun activity, and more like something they would do when they are scared, that’s not actually the case. They like to hide in the same way children like to play hide and seek.

So, something like a small cave in their enclosure will make things a lot more fun for them. Here is a link to the cave that I have in my tortoise’s enclosure: Reptile Rock Hide Cave if you want to see what a tortoise cave should look like.

As for digging, which is one of their favorite activities, you should make sure that they have a good substrate, otherwise, they won’t be able to do so properly.

Here is an extract from my series on what is the best substrate for a tortoise based on its species:

The best thing that you can use as a substrate for your tortoise is a combination of soil with sand. The soil is perfect for digging, and it provides a lot of thermal benefits. And combining it with sand will let you adjust the amount of humidity that it will retain.

While sand by itself is a terrible choice, combining it with soil should solve any problem.

The exact proportion you should mix those two can vary depending on your area, if you live in an area with a lot of humidity you might need to add a little more sand than somebody who lives in a dryer area. But in general, the mix should be around 75% to 85% soil and the rest of 25% to 15% sand.

The soil and the sand that you use don’t have to be anything special, just make sure that the soil is 100% natural, with no added fertilizers, organic or chemical, and the sand has to be relatively small and soft.

Here are a few links to Amazon, for the sand and the soil that I use, both of them are perfect for a Hermann tortoise substrate:

For the warmer months of the year, I would also recommend you use some coconut fiber, but this means that you will have to be a little more careful than usual. As I mentioned before, if you keep them for too long they can get moldy, so I would recommend you to change them after one month or two. Also, make sure that you don’t let them get dry, if they get too dry they will get dusty, and they can cause problems for your tortoise. And the last thing that you have to be careful about is to keep them away from the basking area.

Even if they require some extra care, coconut fibers can be really great at keeping the humidity high, during the hot summer months. So if you can spend a couple of minutes each day to check if everything is ok with them, then I suggest you go ahead and use them.

And here is a link to Amazon for the coconut fibers that I use for my tortoise: Zoo Med Eco Earth Loose Coconut Fiber Substrate.

If you want to know more about substrate humidity, which substrates you should avoid, and more, make sure that you check out my series on the best substrate for a tortoise based on its species.

Besides adding substrate, rocks, and caves to their toys there are a few more things that you can do to make their enclosure more entertaining, and a few that might seem like a good idea, but are not. So let’s see what those are.

Taking Your Tortoise Out for a Walk

This is a great way of keeping your tortoise entertained, it’s simple, it doesn’t cost you anything and there are no downsides to it.

To walk a tortoise you don’t need any special equipment like a leash or anything like that. Just take your tortoise out of its enclosure, and let it explore the area freely.

There are just three things that you have to be careful about.

The first one is to make sure that your tortoise doesn’t run in a tight place from where you can’t take it out. Regardless of what you might have heard tortoises are not that slow, when they are scared they can really run.

The second thing that you have to be careful of is how you handle your tortoise, be careful not to scare it with sudden movements, otherwise, your tortoise will just sit in its shell and won’t move. This is also quite common behavior for tortoises if they aren’t used to being taken out of their enclosure. If your tortoise hides in its shell there are two things that you can do. The first one is to wait, and the second is to try to get it out of its shell by using some food as bait.

And the final thing that you have to do is be careful about other animals. Cats and especially dogs really like to play with tortoises.

More Space

Having more space, whether we are talking about a bigger terrarium or an enclosure, it’s always a good thing for a tortoise, and it will always be more entertaining than any toy.

Tortoises don’t naturally play with toys, what they do instead is explore, climb rocks, and dig holes in the ground. And having more space means that they have more space to explore, climb and dig.

Avoid Getting a New Tortoise

Getting a new tortoise might seem like a great idea, that will keep your current tortoise happy and entertained, but in reality, it’s one of the worst possible things that you can do.

The most obvious thing that you could do is to get your tortoise a new friend. But in reality, this is quite a terrible idea.

The most common thing that can happen if you have more than one tortoise in the same enclosure is that they will fight.

As for the reason, they will fight, well there are a lot of reasons why they will start a fight. One of the reasons can be the food. Even if you give them enough food, they will still try to take each other’s food and this will result in fighting. There is no way to avoid this, at some point they will fight over this if you feed them in the same enclosure.

Placing food for each tortoise on separate sides of the enclosure might seem like a good idea, but at some point, one of the tortoises will try to go to the other side to take the food from there as well. The only way to solve this is to feed them one at a time in a separate container/enclosure, unless you do this they will fight at some point over food.

Another reason why they might fight is for territory. This is just the way animals are, there is no way to stop them from doing this.

Getting a male and a female tortoise won’t stop the aggressive behavior. Both of them will still be territorial, and there is a good chance that the male will be aggressive with the female during the mating season, especially if the female doesn’t like the male.

So whether you have two males, two females, or one male and a female, they can still fight for a number of reasons.

On the other hand, juvenile and baby tortoises are actually very peaceful compared to adult tortoises. So there are smaller chances of them fighting, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. One of the biggest problems is that they are small, and as a result, their tails can sometimes look like something that they would normally eat. And because of that, they can sometimes bite each other’s tails. Which can easily lead to fights and nipped tails.

Placing an adult tortoise with a juvenile tortoise will basically result in the smaller tortoise being bullied by the bigger tortoise for every reason possible, so this is also not an option.

Another big problem is that one tortoise can assert its dominance over the others, this will mean that the others won’t get to eat as much food and that they will also not get to bask as much, and over time this can lead to serious health problems.

Tortoises are just like being alone, you won’t find a tortoise that likes to have company, instead, you might find that there can be tortoises that are able to tolerate other tortoises. After all, every tortoise has a slightly different personality, and this can play a big role in how well they get with other tortoises.

I’m not trying to tell you that keeping more than one tortoise in the same enclosure is impossible, it is, but they will need a lot of space so that they won’t have to interact with each other too much. But again this kind of goes against the idea of having company.

So other tortoises aren’t a good idea, but what about other reptiles?

Placing a Tortoise With Another Reptile in the Same Enclosure

Unfortunately placing a tortoise with another reptile is also a bad idea. Even if reptiles as a whole can be very different in appearance and customs, they all share one personality trait, they like to be alone.

So everything that can happen with two tortoises can happen with a tortoise and a snake, a gecko, a chameleon, or any kind of lizard. The only difference is that the fights will be more dangerous.

Even if they don’t seem like it, tortoises can defeat some snake species, and usually, the wounds left behind can be very dangerous. And if a snake tries to eat a tortoise, the shell can present a lot of problems during digestion. So it doesn’t matter who wins the fight, they will both have to suffer.

Unlike snakes and tortoises, lizards can be very different from species to species, so I can’t give you an exact example of what can happen if they fight, but let’s just say that it won’t end in a good way for either of them.

Having a tortoise and a snake, or a lizard, can actually be more dangerous than having two tortoises. When two tortoises fight they don’t have any advantage or disadvantage over the other, so the fight usually ends after just a couple of scratches or bites. And that is not enough to make severe wounds. But if a snake and a tortoise fight things can be very different because the fight is not balanced at all.

Final Thoughts

As far as toys go, there are no traditional toys that tortoises enjoy instead they like climbing, hiding, and digging.

Another thing that you can do to make things more entertaining for your tortoise is to take it for a walk from time to time.

And avoid getting another tortoise just so they can keep each other company, as they don’t really enjoy the company of other turtles, or any other reptile for that matter.

I hope that you found this article useful and that your tortoise won’t get bored any time soon. If you have any questions about tortoises don’t hesitate to leave them in the comment section below. I check the comment section regularly and answer all the questions that I find.