A family with a lost tortoise has discovered an unusual way to persuade their pet to come home.

The Horner family spent hours looking for Boris and Lily in their garden after the pair broke down their enclosure and made a run for it.

"They rammed it then went hell for leather," Mrs Horner told The Times. "Many people think they are slow, but these guys just went for it."

Lily was eventually found in the geraniums, but Boris remained missing and the family grew worried. "Anyone who has lost a turtle or tortoise, even momentarily, knows the feeling of near heart-stopping panic," says the Tortoise Trust.

Increasingly desperate, the Horner family turned to the unusually abundant supply of tortoise pornography on YouTube.

"We went back outside, played that, and lo and behold Boris appeared," they said.

Dr James Gibbs, an expert in Galapagos tortoises, told The Times that few tortoises would be able to resist the sound of a reptilian orgy.

"Males do troll around for the sounds of mating," he said. "They make quite a lot of noise – we can hear them groaning for miles."

Dominant males then fight over a single female, pushing each other off as they attempt to balance on her shell, often damaging it.

The noise the animals make while mating is often extremely startling – in fact, the sound of lovemaking tortoises was used to voice the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

Warning: the following video may be unsuitable for young tortoises