How to Sex a Tortoise Without First-Time Awkwardness

In the world of tortoise husbandry one will eventually happen upon the topic of “sexing your tortoise.”


Now, this is perhaps the most unusual use of the word “sex” in the English language. We can always trust a science department to come up with bizarre usages of the mother tongue in order to explain itself to itself.

When the usage is then placed back into casual conversation, there could be ensuing fallout, if not years of therapy.

A friend, for example, calls on my cell phone and says, “Hey. What are you doing?”

“I am sexing my tortoise,” I reply.

Silence. Silence. Then a disconnect.

The first time I really wanted to sex my tortoise was in the pet store. In front of God and everyone in the midst of pet commerce I asked to sex my tortoise.

The pet store staff member avoided eye contact with me and said, sheepishly, “We don’t do that here.”

“We used to,” she continued, “but it was just too much trouble. Some people were not satisfied after they took the tortoise home, and would bring it back.”

It is just not done in the store anymore.

The internet, of course, has information about sexing tortoises, and the subject is frequently brought up in some of my Yahoo tortoise groups, where anonymity is guaranteed, or at least implied. Somehow, when I open my group’s page, the banner at the top says, “Welcome Tim!” I am assuming they mean, “Welcome Time!” and everybody gets this misspelled greeting.

As you might imagine, sexing a tortoise can be difficult. The utilitarian parts are well-hidden. Tortoise poop just seems to materialize magically. Where it once was not, there it now is. I always expect Ilarion to say, “Abracadabra, mister,” after his brief show.

Odd as it seems, the word “sex” is rarely used as a verb. For those of you who missed diagramming sentences (you fortunate fools), in the phrase “have sex,” the verb is “have.” The object – the noun – the thing – is “sex.”

You usually don’t think in terms of “sexing” something, or saying, for example, “Let’s sex.”

You can do that with the word “party.” You can have a party, or you can party, but you cannot party something.

So, sex you can have, but you cannot sex something, unless you own a tortoise.

“To sex,” in tortonian, is to determine the gender of the animal.

Most times this is easily done with animals, if that is the correct way to say it. You would think I could just flip over my tortoise and more or less notice whether he/she is a male or female without embarrassing the animal or myself.

The whole shell thing is, let’s just say, an obstacle.

So, we are told we can sex our tortoises by noting the tail.

“The female tail is much shorter than the male’s,” says the internet.

That would have been helpful, had I had a number of tortoises to observe. This was my first and only tortoise tail, so it was simultaneously the largest and the smallest tortoise tail I had ever seen.

More information soon brought some light. The males curve their tails to the side, sort of under one hip, if you will. The tail to the side made it much easier to sex my tortoise. He’s a he.

Oh, and the reason the male tail is longer, is so the he can hold on to the female with it when they are partying.