Would wild blue tongue injure young eastern long neck turtle.

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Neltune2

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Sanctuary Point, NSW, Australia
A wild blue tongue is managing to get into my turtle enclosure. Cant work out how at this point. I find it sitting next to my young eastern long neck when he is outside the pound sun bathing. The bluey sits only about 10cm away from the turtle. The turtle looks perturbed but remains sun bathing.

His shell is 16com long so not yet full size. I am trying to work out if the blue tong is thinking about harming the turtle of if its trying to be buddies? Any one had experience with blueys and young eastern long necks. It seems pretty determined to be with the turtle. Sometimes it judt sits outside his encloser looking in or if I have the turtle out free ranging the yard with me, bluey comes and watches.
 
At this point, if there was going to be aggression then it is likely it would have happened by now. Dominant bluetongues don’t muck around with getting stuck into what they perceive as rivals. Bluetongues live a solitary existence, except during the mating season. The only thing I can think of is it may be a confused female looking for a mate. Do you know the gender of the bluey?

There are a couple of things that worry me. Firstly, how is the bluey accessing the turtle cage? Both turtles and blueys can burrow and both can climb surprisingly well. Mind you, the bluey is definitely the much better climber of the two due to its flexible body. If a bluey can get into you cage, then so can a rat, and that would not be good. More importantly, the turtle may be able to escape the same way the way the bluey gets in and out. I’d be very thorough in trying to determine how it does this. You can even try covering the back of the bluey with flour and see where the flour trail leads to. Sealing the cage properly would be my first priority.

My second concern is no mention of water. If the turtle was uncomfortable with the bluetongue, then it would remain its pond, which it should have. Australian turtles are all primarily aquatic and if housed indoors are kept in large aquariums with a floating turtle dock. The dock allows them to crawl out of the water and bask. They do need to be able to periodically dry off. In nature they show a preference for using logs jutting out of the water. If these are not available, then they will use an accessible clear section of the river bank.

A suitable outside enclosure for an Australian turtle should essentially be an enclosed pond with just a little perimeter of dry land. The pond itself should be about 3m x 2m x 1m deep to provide stable water temperature. If in a northern location, a strip of shade cloth down the centre can provide protection from intense summer sun middle of the day while allowing morning and afternoon sun. Alternatively, a covering of duckweed will have a similar effect. There are numerous threads on turtle ponds on APS that can be accessed through the “Search” facility of the forum.
 

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