Let the battle begin! I had a ringside seat — well, actually a rock-side seat. I was standing on a slope in Calico Basin, watching two desert tortoises fighting between the boulders. Head-to-head, they went after each other, their stout front legs often becoming entangled. The impact of their shells banging could be heard 10 feet away. Their fight for the right to breed lasted for two and a half hours before the smaller tortoise turned and walked away.
But it wasn’t the end.
That event occurred on a fine spring morning in April 2024. I was hiking and recording sightings of tortoises and other animals as a volunteer for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. The next morning, I walked past the battle scene, and they were at it again.
It wasn’t hard to recognize them as the same two, as all tortoises have distinguishing nicks or irregular shapes on the carapace, their top shell.
I had more ground to cover, so I did not wait to see how long this fight lasted, but I did get to witness what could have been the fatal flip. With good leverage, a tortoise can turn its opponent on its back. On level ground in the open desert, that could lead to death, as their legs are not long enough to reach the ground. But among the rocks, they can usually right themselves.
Some dominant males seem to like the fight to go on and will help flip the other back on its feet. That happened twice. They will bite one another on the hind legs, but their tough hide never breaks open.
I told a park ranger friend where the tortoises were, and he checked on them the next day. He called to tell me that there were now three. The same two fought, and the third, another male, was perhaps a casual observer or the referee. It’s perhaps worth noting that there were no females lurking in the background, watching these shenanigans.
Last spring, I was once again out enjoying all the desert has to offer, and I walked past the battlegrounds. The same two males were duking it out again. When I returned home and checked my field notes, I discovered that the dates of the fights were the same, April 20. The same day a year later, and at the same time in the morning. Creatures of habit.
You probably know that male members of the deer family — white-tails, elk, and moose — invest a great deal of energy each year growing antlers for one purpose: supremacy that leads to breeding rights. It may seem odd that tortoises fight for the same reasons, but most reptiles do, including snakes and Gila monsters.
As tortoise habitats disappear, scientists scramble to find suitable deserts for relocation, but relocation often fails, and high mortality rates are not uncommon. The tortoise may struggle to find food and shelter in an unfamiliar place. If put in an area with an already sustainable population, the competition for resources increases and may lead to the loss of body weight and overall health. Predation by coyotes, badgers, and ravens is a huge threat to a confused, weak, and wandering tortoise.
Yet, in the midst of all this, the desert tortoise (gopherus agassizii) has a homing behavior that isn’t perfectly understood, but which does exist. In one study, 44 percent of tortoises relocated a mile and a half away walked back to their home range in about a month. In a more bizarre case, biologist Robert Baumert relocated tortoises seven miles from a solar field under construction. His company was obligated to track the reptiles for five years. As he remembers it, within three to five years, half-a-dozen or more of the hardy, stubborn, and awesome tortoises trekked back to their original desert homeland. They had to cross hot, open deserts, utility corridors, and some high rocky terrain, but they did it. For an animal with an average length of 12 inches and a weight of 10 pounds, that is quite a feat.
They’re tough, all right. And even after all the fighting and stress, the victorious males still have to roam about and find a mate. I wonder how she knows he was the champ?
This year, April 20 falls on a Monday. You can guess where I’ll be. Perhaps I can become a creature of habit, too.
