Hyper Tortoise

Question
I have a Russian Tortoise for 2 months and in the past couple weeks he has been going crazy! He's tearing up his tank and literally climbing the walls. Flipping over his water bowl and creating a total mess.  Do you think he needs a girlfriend or is trying to find a way to escape?

Answer
There can be several things going on here.

It might be feeling the trigger to hibernate (shortening days, dropping temps) and looking for a good hibernation site. Combat this with longer light cycles in the habitat and make sure temps and humidity are good.

It might be feeling that the habitat is a little tight. These guys need quite a bit of room- and adult generally wants about an 4'x4' space at a minimum- many experts say 8'x4'.

Maybe the temps and/or humidity is out of the comfort zone and it is trying to find better ranges.

The mating drive is rarely strong enough to do this, so there is probably some other issue involved.

I would suggest reviewing the cares against a good website like http://www.tortoisetrust.org or http://www.russiantortoise.org and see if there are things that can be tweaked.

Good luck!