African Spurred Tortoise Facts

African Spurred Tortoise Profile

Should you be wandering through the Sahel region of the Sahara just after the September rains have moved on, looking for something to do, and overhear from over a ridge a cute little voice saying, “Wow, wow, wow”, avert your gaze! 

For this is the distinctive copulation sound of a male African Spurred Tortoise, as he has his way with an ambiguously quiet female.

African Spurred Tortoise Facts Overview

The African-spurred tortoise is an absolute monster of a Testudine. One of the largest land turtles in the world, they quickly grow into animals that are more or less immune to predation, but despite this, they are in serious trouble from being poached and displaced by the ever-encroaching pesky human presence. 

While they are in serious decline in the wild, these are popular as pets and in captivity in general, readily breeding and surviving well, as long as their dietary needs are met.

Interesting African Spurred Tortoise Facts

1. They’re terrestrial water tortoises

This might not be a shock to people from the US, or those whose job it is to ask dangerous replicants questions about their mothers, but for a lot of folks, the distinction between tortoises and turtles is obvious: tortoises are waddling, hard-shelled terrestrial old men and turtles are elegant, leathery water-based crime fighters, sometimes with universes on their backs. 

But taxonomy disagrees with these distinctions, and places tortoises within the umbrella group of turtles, which makes all tortoises turtles, but not all turtles tortoises.

To support this grouping, Asian turtles and pond turtles are more closely related to tortoises than they are to sea turtles, so if one is to demand a distinction, it would make more sense to call turtles in this superfamily “water tortoises”, and this would make the African spurred tortoise a terrestrial water tortoise, along with the other members of the Testudinidae family. 

This species is a member of the lonely genus of Centrochelys, once home to several species, now all extinct but one. But what a tortoise it is! 

2. They’re massive

There are some monster tortoises off the coast continents, driven to gigantism through a process of isolation and predatorlessness (unfortunately, not a real word), but the mainland tortoises are usually no bigger than a football. A real football, not the hand-egg they use in the States. 

But the African-spurred tortoise is enormous! It is the largest mainland species of tortoise and the third largest in the world after the Galapagos and the Aldabra giants.

This species reaches up to a metre long in shell length and can weigh more than 120 kg, but they don’t start off all that big at all and are born around 4 cm long and about 40 grams. 

As long as they get rainfall, they seem to grow up quite quickly but this can be a slower process during times of droughts. ¹

3. They seem to like dry riverbeds

This species is an open, dry location specialist, and prefers hills and dunes with shrubby grasses to eat. They dig burrows to hide in during the hottest parts of the day, so a stable dune system is good for this, as is a dried-up river bed. 

What they’re looking for is the combination of a sandy substrate for digging and a lack of movement in the sand for the best grasses to grow on.

During the dry season, they’ll dig into a dried river bed and hardly come out, making use of the reptilian qualities of reduced metabolisms and aestivation to use very little energy until the rains come back and plants begin to grow again. 

Building these burrows into a dry river bed means they just have to sit and wait until the rains bring both vegetation and the occasional corpse downstream, both of which are handy nutrient sources for the tortoise. 

Unfortunately, this is also prime cattle grazing habitat, and farmers are outcompeting the humble tortoises. ²

4. They’re becoming rare

This species, being the last of its entire genus, is well worthy of protection, and sadly, it needs some. Their range has been reduced to around 16% of its former glory, being wiped out in favour of human livestock. 

Cattle are the biggest problem, as they eat all the grass the tortoises need but they are also collected for the pet trade, which is quite easy to do on account of tortoises moving very slowly.

5. Desertification sucks

Deserts are supposed to exist, and they have their own diverse and rich ecosystems that are equally valid with any other habitat.

But deserts have their place and forests have theirs, and if we keep cutting down the forests we’re going to see all this get scrambled. 

Desertification isn’t just a product of rising global temperatures, it’s also a result of a reduction in vegetation, and we are seeing this in the regions where the spurred tortoise is trying to survive. 

The Sahel region of the Sahara is a sort of transition zone between the stunning and desolate rolling sands and the savanna grassland ecosystems that act as a buffer between the desert and the forest.

But our understanding of the importance of these ecosystems is coming a little too late and they are rapidly being converted to farmland. Shrubs and trees are reducing, grasses are being overgrazed and soils are depleted, as the earth turns more to sand and the desert creeps in.

This is a multifaceted process but one that is causing the most harm to the spurred tortoise who really needs more grass and a bit less sand than the true desert will be offering. 

Habitat fragmentation and loss have been responsible for around 60% of the decline in this species and climate change takes another 25%. 10% of the decline is due to the consumption of its eggs or meat by people and around 5% from the pet trade.

The higher the grazing intensity of the land, the fewer tortoises there will be. And this is the starting point for conservationists interested in reintroducing the species. ^{3 4}

6. They breed well in captivity

Many, if not most, reintroductions begin with captive populations, and fortunately for this species, it is easily reared in captivity. This means, that if conservation efforts can solve the causes of the loss in the wild, reintroductions should be a piece of cake. 

Easier said than done, though. 

Meanwhile, captive tortoises are being kept all over the world, and are prone to a lot of the same issues as other species. 

Like many, if not all tortoises, these giants are prone to deformations in their shells if they aren’t eating a balanced diet. Nutritional imbalances such as too much protein or low calcium, can cause pyramiding of the shells, where the scutes grow up into pointed protrusions. 

At least one captive tortoise refused to eat for two weeks, slept all day and didn’t poop, and an x-ray showed that the poor guy had bladder stones.

Surgery on tortoises involves tools you’d be more familiar with in a metalwork class: things like surgical dremels, but the process was a success and the tortoise was eating again within a day after surgery. 

So, people are learning a lot about this species while others are trying to solve the bigger problem of habitat destruction, but the species as a whole is still in a lot of trouble. ⁵

7. Reintroductions are working

Tortoises are built like tanks, so it’s no surprise that their survival is so high when returned to a viable habitat.

In both Ferlo and Senegal, reintroductions of this species have shown survival rates of about 80%, and they just appear to get on with it. 

With so many private collections around the world, their genetic integrity should be easy to secure, and the hope is that more introductions will turn the tide for the species, which is currently considered Endangered by the IUCN.  

African Spurred Tortoise Fact-File Summary

Scientific Classification

1. “African spurred tortoise”, Dublin Zoo.
2. Fabio Petrozzi (2007), “Habitat Determinants of the Threatened Sahel Tortoise Centrochelys sulcata At Two Spatial Scales”, Herpetological Conservation and Biology.
3. “African Spurred Tortoise”, IUCN Red List.
4. Fabio Petrozzi (2017), “Exploring the main threats to the threatened African spurred tortoise Centrochelys sulcata in the West African Sahel”, Cambridge University Press.
5. “African Spurred Tortoise”, IUCN Red List.