A bionic tortoise

November 12, 2013 • 6:15 am

Okay, I’m working hard today on Teh Book, and so don’t expect hard thinking, which will make my brain hurt.  I thought I’d both start and end the day with some heartwarming animal stuff. The first comes from reader Diana who, as we all know, reverses the toilet rolls in restaurants and her friends’ homes. It’s a story from The Local (an English-language site about German news), explaining how vets gave mobility to an amputee tortoise:

First, the animal:

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Schildi the bionic tortoise. Photo: DPA

Then the story of How the Tortoise Got Its Wheel:

Meet Schildi the bionic tortoise. He was found with a missing leg having probably been abandoned by his owners. Vets in Germany who patched him up and fitted him with a Lego wheel say he’s moving nicely now.

“First we fitted a double wheel but it was difficult for him to turn corners so we replaced it with a single wheel and that is much better for him,” Dr Panagiotis Azmanis told The Local.

He works at the Birdconsulting International veterinary practice of Marcellus Bürkle in Achern in Baden, and ended up raiding the toy box of the practice manager’s daughter for wheels and spacer blocks.

Initially though the focus was on saving the tortoise’s life. “He was in pretty bad shape when they brought him to us. The lower part of his front leg was missing, and the upper part was very bad, with bone showing, and maggots in necrotic flesh.” One the animal had been stabilized, the vets amputated the injured leg at the shoulder and treated him with antibiotics and fluids, as well as giving him pain killers.

Then came the question of lifting his fourth corner so he could move around.

“Tortoises need to run free in gardens, so he needed a prosthetic,” said Azmanis.

He used special veterinary surgical glue to stick a base block to the underside of Schildi. The corners of the base block were glued with normal superglue. “After that we could add blocks to achieve the correct height,” he said.

And now the single wheel has proven to be successful, Schildi has been taken back to the animal shelter.

“We will see him again once in a while for check-ups,” Azmanis said.

“If he gets a ‘flat tyre’ it will be a simple matter to replace the wheel. They move around quite a lot so I’d expect to see him for a new wheel about once a year.”

And Diana’s take:

I believe it’s a yellow-footed tortoise (they are from the rainforests of South America). I grew up with a tortoise like this as my parents had a male (named Esther because they didn’t know he was a boy until he matured sexually & BTW the Wikipedia article is dead-on accurate about the mating rituals). I think it’s extra cute that they named the tortoise “Schildi,” since tortoise in German is “Schildkrote”; I know this because I once did a presentation to my German class about my tortoise (everyone else did speeches on their trip to Germany, but I was too poor for trips).

Note: If anything shows “the better angels of our nature,” this does: people spent hours fixing this animal. 150 years ago they would have tossed it in the soup pot. Pinker is right.

29 thoughts on “A bionic tortoise”

  1. Reminds me of a comment by the Duke of Edinburgh to a soldier who lost his legs in Afghanistan, ‘You could fit wheels on them’ referring to his leg prostheses.

  2. I love animal rescue stories with happy endings. There are rather large snapping turtles on the lake in the Adirondacks where I spend the summer. I was out for a paddle (kayak) when I saw two of them making whoopie out in the middle of the lake. I gave them their privacy, naturally, but when I came back half an hour later, they were still at it! Very passionate!

    2. Yes darrelle is correct (and will thus be spared in the new toilet paper regime); the correct orientation is under and if the toilet paper is over, it needs to be reoriented.

      1. Over is the correct orientation for preventing massive unspooling of the roll (then time-consuming re-spooling) when someone tugs on the end too firmly.
        People like Diana are part of the reason that most public toilets keep the paper in locked unit.
        There are other ways of discouraging people from fiddling about though : Youtube has enough examples.
        I assume this is Diana’s entry in the 25 megaview contest.

  4. A wonderful story in everyway. Stuff like this is why I still have hope we can pull through the next hundred years without a massive crash.

  5. Thank you for the lovely story.
    I discovered a wild tortoise on my smallholding this year (I stay in Pretoria, South Africa). It was so heartwarming to experience that there are still some wildlife larger than a lizard surviving in the city.
    He had us stressing the past weekend as he drank water from the swimming pool, and I was concerned that he would fall in. Thereafter I placed a water bowl in the garden.
    The Afrikaans name for tortoise is “skildpad”, and a common Afrikaans name for a pet tortoise is “Skillie”. The “skil” probably comes from the germanic “schild”, which means shield. This obviously refers to his shell serving as a shield to protect the animal from predators.

    1. Yes, almost

      “Schild” means “shield”
      “Kröte” means “toad”

      So “Schildkröte” literally means “Shield toad”

      1. Yep, that’s the literal meaning. My favourite word for an animal is the Ancient Greek word for ostrich: struthocamelos (στρυθοκαμηλοϛ) which means sparrow-camel. 🙂

  7. A while ago, I recall a story of a turtle which was fitted with prosthetic limbs. And Googling it, I discover that in a strange reversal of so many stereotypes, the turtle was “finned” by a shark, and is now living in a Japanese zoo.
    Link

  8. heartwarming, perhaps, but also thoroughly unnecessary. In the course of field research I’ve met at least a dozen wild tortoises and box turtles with a missing limb. They do just fine (it’s not like they gallop or trot).
    I foresee that wheel easily jamming with dirt and actually impeding Schildi’s progress.

  9. I too had a pet yellow footed tortoise when growing up. ‘Oscar’ pretty much had the run of the upstairs house. He would cruise around, check out the cat food bowl and the dog food bowl (D and C would investigate, not knowing what do do about this…thing. Then he would rest in his sunny spot or snuggle against the heat vent of the fridge. I swear he would come when I called him.

    Pssst, Diana, how does one contact the Ceiling Cat? I have some pictures I am hoping to share here one day.

    1. My tortoise used to sit in front of the refrigerator vent as well! He would also come to “greet” you and I found tortoises to be very persistent with exits; they tend to push against exits/entrances and if you let the tortoise out, he/she will turn around to push against the door you just opened for him/her. They also are very curious and want to check out all kinds of things.

      To contact Prof Ceiling Cat, select About the Author in the links on the right side of the site then select Research from the right side. You’ll see an email address there. Or just google. 🙂

  10. My brother had a spaniel who lost a front leg in an accident. After amputation, he spent the rest of his long life getting around quite well on three legs. They renamed him Tripod.

    1. A friend of mine had a d*g that was hit by a car when he was a pup, and had a back leg amputated. He got around almost as fast as if he had the whole complement of legs.

      But sometimes his front leg would be sore, and then he’d limp…using just the two legs on the same side. That slowed him down considerably, but he still got around just fine.

      I’ve often been surprised at just how well dogs can balance, (on the back of motorcycles etc) considering they’re terrestrial and don’t climb trees and the like.

  11. Awww! tortoises always make my day -even more than felids 😉
    I think it’s a Greek tortoise, though; not a yellow-footed, but that’s just on a hunch (and the face).

  16. This is a Russian tortoise, Agrionemys horsfieldii, a common species in the pet trade from central Asia. They have only four claws on each front foot instead of the five typical of most species.

    I second the opinion that the wheel is unnecessary. This species probably wouldn’t do well in the wild with a missing front leg as they dig extensive burrows, but most species get around just fine, especially in captivity. The wheel prevents the animal from resting flat when it wants to and could easily get hung up on obstacles.

    It’s always nice to see turtles and tortoises receiving medical care. It’s absolutely worth the time and expense for such long-lived animals.

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