More African spurred tortoises now live as pets than in the wild
The sulcata tortoise hatches at about the weight of a small egg and can grow past 100 kilograms. It is the biggest tortoise on any mainland, digging burrows up to 15 metres deep to escape Sahel heat. Yet it is endangered in the wild, and more of them now live in captivity.
Named in 1779 from the Latin for furrow, after the grooves on its scales, the African spurred tortoise lives along the southern edge of the Sahara and across the Sahel, from Senegal and Mali to Sudan, Ethiopia and Yemen. Only the Galapagos and Aldabra giants are larger. Males average around 81 kilograms, with one recorded at over 120, and bear the thick spurs on their hind legs that give the species its name.
Life in a semi-desert shapes everything it does. It spends the hottest hours in burrows that can stretch 30 metres long, a form of aestivation, and mostly eats grasses and succulents, occasionally scavenging drowned goats washed downstream in the rains. Once past about 30 kilograms it is nearly immune to predators. The leading natural cause of death is ending up on its back, usually after fights between males, which are fiercely territorial in the breeding season from September to November.
Reproduction is slow. Females dig nests for hours, lay an egg every few minutes, and may produce two or three clutches in a season, but sexual maturity takes 10 to 15 years. That makes the pet trade especially damaging: CITES records show 9,132 wild tortoises taken between 1990 and 2010, almost certainly an undercount, and any caught before maturity never breed. Surveys suggest the species survives in only about 16.7 percent of its former range, squeezed by cattle grazing, wildfires and climate change.
There is a hopeful angle. Reintroduction programmes in the Ferlo region of Senegal have seen survival rates around 80 percent, showing that captive animals can readjust to the savanna. Because pets now outnumber wild tortoises, conservationists hope to recruit owners into breeding schemes whose hatchlings would all be released.
Source: African spurred tortoise
