Figure 3: Homing trajectories for radio-tagged tortoises
After successful homing, it was noted that there was a delimited home area, with two or more crevices, within which some of the tortoises could freely reside at different times. Female 560HSL, for instance, on its homing journey first entered a crevice (inhabited by another male/female pair) 0.134km south of its original home. Its male partner (543HSL) straight homed to their original crevice at Station 6 and after a few days shifted to another crevice on a huge rock 0.088km north of its original home crevice. Nearby there was another crevice inhabited by four other tortoises. 560HSL then eventually moved to the original home crevice and was alone for a day before shifting to the huge rock also inhabited by 543HSL. This movement to and fro crevices in the vicinity of the home crevice was also observed for the tortoise 910HSL and 643HSL.
Table 1: Radio-tagged Pancake tortoise carapace length, sex, Translocation distances, homing Distances and homing duration