The Sulcata Tortoise – also known as the African spurred tortoise – is the largest mainland tortoise. It easily reaches 30 inches in length and well over 100 pounds in heft. Some males even reach 200 pounds! It is surpassed only by the island dweller tortoises from Aldabra and Galápagos.
Turtles and tortoises are a very old group of reptiles, going back about 220 million years. Of all wildlife with backbones, turtles and tortoises are the only ones that also have a shell – made up of 59 to 61 bones covered by plates called scutes, which are made of keratin like our fingernails. They cannot crawl out of it because the shell is permanently attached to the spine and the rib cage. The shell’s top is called the carapace, and the bottom is the plastron. They can feel pressure and pain through their shells, just as you can feel pressure through your fingernails.
This tortoise can go weeks without food or water, and when they find a water source it can drink up to 15 percent of its body weight!
The Spurred Tortoise is most active during the rainy season between July and October. It is “crepuscular” in habit, meaning it leaves the den to forage at dawn and at dusk. It warms itself in the morning sun to raise its body temperature after the chill of night. The tortoise will become inactive during extreme temperatures and will hole up in an underground den. A Sulcata Tortoise could die of hyperthermia if it falls on its back during the heat of the day.
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