{"id":691,"date":"2012-02-25T09:00:19","date_gmt":"2012-02-25T17:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com\/?p=691"},"modified":"2012-02-25T09:00:19","modified_gmt":"2012-02-25T17:00:19","slug":"slow-and-steady-stays-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/2012\/02\/25\/slow-and-steady-stays-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Slow and Steady Stays at Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Submitted<\/strong> by friend of the blog,\u00a0Spencer Marks<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

A<\/strong> few years ago, I was driving home, and saw something moving in the\u00a0middle of the street on the north end of the block that my house was\u00a0on. When I got close enough, I realized it was a 12\u201d California\u00a0Desert Tortoise just walking down the middle of the street, in broad\u00a0daylight, and in the middle of the city! Not wanting him (I knew it\u00a0was male due to the \u201cfighting fork\u201d under his carapace) to get run\u00a0over, I picked him up, and took him to my house. He seemed very\u00a0comfortable around people, since when he would see someone approach,\u00a0he would actually run toward the approaching person (well, as fast as\u00a0a tortoise can run!), presumably to get fed. I figured he must have\u00a0been hand-raised, since he had absolutely no fear of humans at all,\u00a0and seemed to enjoy their company.<\/p>\n

A<\/strong> month later, I was talking to a friend (one I didn\u2019t talk to that\u00a0often), about him coming to pick up some equipment from my house, and\u00a0he asked for my address. As soon as I gave it to him, he said, \u201cOh\u00a0wow \u2026 I grew up on that very street \u2026 just at the other end of the\u00a0block from you!\u201d We then talked a bit about who was in the\u00a0neighborhood when he was growing up, and who still had a house there,\u00a0and all of that sort of stuff, and for some reason he said, \u201cI had a\u00a0pet tortoise when I was a kid, and we couldn\u2019t find it when we moved\u00a0out, so I wonder if it is still at that house\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I<\/strong> almost fell over! I told him that I had just found a tortoise in the\u00a0street DIRECTLY in front of his old house the month before. He had\u00a0moved away over 30 years prior to that, so I assumed it MUST have just\u00a0been a different tortoise, but when he came to my house to pick up the\u00a0equipment, he took one look at the tortoise, and said, \u201cYEP!\u00a0That\u2019s him!\u201d<\/p>\n

I<\/strong> asked him if he wanted him back, and he said no, so today\u00a0\u201cSpeedy\u201d lives with me at my new house, with lots of places to\u00a0roam, and spoiled with fruits and veggies by all who see him!<\/p>\n

[EDITOR:<\/strong>\u00a0We’ve all heard the crazy story of the dog or cat that manages to track their family ALL the way across the country to their new home (and seen plenty of movies about it, too). But it takes the brilliant staying power of a tortoise to stick around and wait 30 years for their family to return to them.]<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Updated<\/strong> 4\/23\/2012<\/p>\n

Below<\/strong> are the extended notes provided by Barbara Drescher for use in Skepticality Episode 181<\/a>. Take a look and leave your comments below.<\/p>\n

In<\/strong> most of the stories of coincidence we share, the proximity, time-wise, of two incidents is\u00a0short, but it’s hard to be shocked by it. Given the number of people with which Spencer was\u00a0likely to interact in the weeks following finding the tortoise and the likelihood that some of those\u00a0people lived in that neighborhood at some time in their lives, interacting with the tortoise’s\u00a0previous owner is less unusual than it appears. The tortoise coming up in conversation is not\u00a0that unusual, either. Any mention of where Spencer lived was bound to spark a conversation\u00a0about the fact that the friend once lived there and that topic is likely to spark memories of the pet\u00a0left behind.<\/p>\n

If<\/strong> the tortoise was an adult when it was lost by the friend, the odds were pretty good that he\u00a0would still be there 30 years later. The three biggest questions that spring to mind are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What<\/strong> is the probability that the tortoise would remain in that location for 30 years without\u00a0intervention?<\/li>\n
  2. What<\/strong> is the probability that the tortoise would have been moved (or taken in and cared\u00a0for as Spencer did) by someone during those 30 years?<\/li>\n
  3. What<\/strong> is the probability that the tortoise would still be alive after 30 years?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That<\/strong> the probability that the tortoise would remain in that location is high is fairly obvious to most\u00a0people, I would think. It would take a tortoise most of day to travel even a mile, so tortoises tend
    \nto maintain a rather small home range. Being removed by a new resident or other human requires being seen. Despite his size, which\u00a0is not insignificant, the tortoise managed to be lost in the first place (assuming it was an adult at\u00a0the time). The species is known for borrowing, so it is highly likely that he dug a hole under the\u00a0house and spent much of his life there, undetected.\u00a0Raccoons, larger and more active animals,\u00a0thrive in urban areas and are rarely seen by their human neighbors. What’s more, the desert\u00a0tortoise lies dormant during colder months, reducing the amount of time it is visible even more. I also wonder how many people would even know what to do if they saw a tortoise walking across the road. Unlike Spencer, I would not have known the species or sex of the animal, nor would I know whether it was safe to pick it up. I might simply try to hold traffic until it was safely across the road, then let it be.<\/p>\n

    If<\/strong> they survive to become adults, the lifespan of a tortoise is similar to that of a human, so 30\u00a0years is not unusual at all. The tortoise’s survival, therefore, relied on its ability to find food and\u00a0avoid predators. Since their diet is mostly grasses, we are left with predators as the biggest\u00a0danger. More specifically, ravens and coyotes (since gila monsters, badgers, and foxes are rare\u00a0in this tortoise’s location). If, as I’ve assumed, the tortoise was an adult when it disappeared, it\u00a0is fairly safe from these as well. Ravens will eat tortoise eggs and juveniles, but the shell of an\u00a0adult is usually too much work when other food is more readily available. Although there might\u00a0be some overlap in the daily cycle of the coyote (which tends to retreat to its den when the sun\u00a0rises) and the desert tortoise (which is most active in the first half of the day), again, the tough adult shell makes a tortoise less desirable than other choices. In short, the chances of surviving 30 years on its own are excellent, assuming (again) that the tortoise was an adult when it was\u00a0lost. It’s actually quite small if it was very young. Only 1 in 5 survives to adulthood in its natural\u00a0habitat.<\/p>\n

    When<\/strong> we consider all of the factors, the one which brings the probability of this incident down\u00a0the most is the temporal factor \u2013 the order and proximity of the events in time. It is certainly\u00a0considerably lower than the average participant’s chances of winning a football pool at their\u00a0office. Still, it is much greater than that of my next door neighbor winning the California lottery,\u00a0yet that jackpot is won by someone’s next door neighbor dozens of times each year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A few years ago, I was driving home, and saw something moving in the middle of the street on the north end of the block that my house was on. When I got close enough, I realized it was a 12\u201d California Desert Tortoise just walking down the middle of the street, in broad daylight, and in the middle of the city!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[262,6],"tags":[1038,1552,463,1553,5,2198,434,1554],"class_list":["post-691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-skepticality","category-stories","tag-barbara-drescher","tag-california-desert-tortoise","tag-childhood","tag-pet","tag-san-fernando-valley","tag-skepticality","tag-spencer-marks","tag-tortoise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tombc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}