They don’t get better. Not to say they can’t live happy, fullfilling lives. A lot of tortoise breeders will buy babies with abberrant scutes because they believe they will probably be females. I’ve seen it mostly at the high end, mostly females. But I have seen it in some male pastel redears (lower end). I wouldn’t say that all deformities (weird scutes, etc) are temperature. Some certainly could be genetic. I wouldn’t keep them for future breeders tho, just to be sure. Albino redears with abberrant scutes can have babies with abberrant scutes, I think more often than ones with normal scutes. I have several friends who say they can pick out the parents because the offspring have the same weird scute in the same place. -Rick Julie wrote: