Tortoises are known to be pretty peaceful and quiet animals, you don’t hear them making a fuss about much or making loud noises at all but they sometimes do.
This article looks into why your tortoise is making whistling noises when eating.
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Tortoise making whistling noise when eating:
Tortoises may not have vocal cords like humans do but they occasionally do make sounds, the sounds that these animals make include hissing, grunting, squeaking, and whistling.
Here is why your tortoise is whistling while eating:
Blocked nose:
The reason why your tortoise may be whistling when eating is likely because some food made its way up the animal’s air passages as the animal was chowing down.
The whistling happens because there is less space in the animal’s nasal passage.
When food becomes stuck in the animal’s nose a part of the airways becomes smaller and when air moves past the object, when the animal breathes, a whistling sound can be heard.
This is similar to how we humans whistle by making the opening of our mouths smaller and letting air pass through the opening.
What to do:
This isn’t something to be worried about, and you don’t usually have to do anything if this is happening with your pet.
Just as in humans, a tortoise’s body is able to remove food particles from the airways through breathing in and out.
Keep an eye on the tortoise to see if the object comes out of the animal’s nose, if the food is stuck in the animal’s nose for a while then you can intervene.
You can intervene by gently flushing your pets’ noise with a saline solution, this should help to flush out the food. You can make a saline solution by mixing one teaspoon of salt into a cup of warm water.
Leave the animal in a quiet warm environment to reduce stress, this reduced stress will make it easier for the animal to breathe.
Avoid trying to get the food out using tweezers, this could cause injury to your pet’s nose. Rather take your pet to the vet who will remove the object from the animal’s nose.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other turtle/tortoise related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Baby Tortoise Crying Noise At Night Sick, Why Is My Turtle Making Clicking Noises?, Tortoise Clicking Jaw, Tortoise Swollen Neck, Tortoise Making Whistling Noise, Tortoise Gasping, Baby Tortoise Gasping, Why Is My Tortoise Squeaking At Night?, Sulcata Tortoise Making Clicking Noise