50 Fun Facts About Tortoise

Tortoises make up which family of the order Testudines?

Testudines is simply Latin for 'tortoise'; the family name applies only to the land-dwelling species with domed shells.

Tortoises are the longest-living what?

Most species manage 80 to 150 years, and a few individuals have been credibly documented well beyond that.

The smallest tortoise, the speckled Cape tortoise, has a shell only about how long?

At the other extreme, the Galápagos giant tortoise grows past 1.2 metres.

Captain Cook gave the tortoise Tu'i Malila, one of the oldest ever recorded, to which country's royal family?

Presented shortly after hatching in 1777, it stayed with the royal household until it died in 1965, aged 188.

Adwaita, an Aldabra giant tortoise claimed to be over 250 at death in 2006, lived at a zoo in which Indian city?

It was said to have been the pet of Robert Clive and was handed to the Alipore zoo when it opened in 1875.

Timothy, a tortoise who lived to about 165, spent 38 years as a mascot aboard which country's warships?

She retired to Powderham Castle in Devon in 1892 and was thought to be the UK's oldest resident when she died in 2004.

Do the concentric rings on a tortoise's shell reliably tell you its age?

A well-fed pet may show no rings at all, others grow more than one a season, and wear erases old ones.

What is the easiest way to tell a male tortoise from a female?

Males have much longer tails held up and to the side; the male's plastron is also curved inward to help with mating.

Which brain region, tied to memory and spatial navigation, do red-footed tortoises lack entirely?

They seem to use the medial cortex instead, an area humans use for decision-making.

Which continent-region has no native tortoises at all?

Australians traditionally called their freshwater turtles 'tortoises' anyway, to the annoyance of local experts.

Tortoises cannot swim, yet they have survived ocean crossings of more than how far?

They can drift for months without food or fresh water, which is how giant tortoises reached so many islands.

How many species of giant tortoise survived into the 21st century?

The Aldabra giant tortoise and the dozen subspecies of Galápagos giant tortoise; giants on Malta, the Canaries, Mauritius and Cuba were all wiped out by people.

Newly hatched tortoises live off what for their first three to seven days?

Once mobile, hatchlings of even strictly herbivorous species often eat worms or insect larvae for extra protein.

What do tortoises generally eat?

Too much protein causes shell deformities in herbivorous species, though a few have been seen catching birds.

How do tortoises communicate during both combat and courtship?

With a shell and short limbs, visual signals are weak, so smell finds a mate and shell-bashing settles the rest.

In Hinduism, Vishnu's second avatar Kurma took the form of a half-man, half-what?

He sat on the ocean floor after the Great Flood while the gods placed a mountain on his back to churn the sea.

In Greek myth, Hermes made the first lyre from what?

In East Asian folk religion tortoises are oracular, and their shells were once used as oracle bones.

In September 1968 two Russian tortoises became the first animals to do what?

Their Zond 5 mission brought them home safely, months before Apollo 8 carried humans around the Moon.

How many subspecies of Galápagos giant tortoise are recognised, living and extinct?

Twelve survive; the species is the largest living tortoise and can weigh up to 417 kg.

The Galápagos Islands are named after the Spanish word 'galápago', meaning what?

Sixteenth-century Spanish explorers found more than 250,000 of the animals; by the 1970s about 15,000 were left.

Which Galápagos environments produce tortoises with 'saddleback' shells and long necks?

Darwin's notes on those differences during the Beagle's 1835 visit fed into his theory of evolution.

Galápagos tortoises can survive how long without any food or water?

They break down body fat to make water, which is why sailors stacked them alive in ships' holds as fresh meat.

What was Lonesome George?

First spotted on Pinta in 1971 after goats had stripped the island, he died in June 2012 without leaving offspring despite a $10,000 reward for a mate.

Which Galápagos tortoise fathered over 900 offspring in a breeding programme before retiring in 2020?

He had spent decades unrecognised at San Diego Zoo until DNA testing showed he was a Hood Island tortoise; his line now numbers over 2,000 on Española.

Harriet, who died at Australia Zoo in 2006 aged about 175, was long claimed to have been collected by whom?

The story is doubted because he never visited Santa Cruz, the island she came from; the zoo belonged to Steve and Terri Irwin.

Jonathan, the record-old tortoise, was taken to which island from the Seychelles in 1882?

He arrived already about 50 years old, was recognised in 2022 as the oldest known living land animal, and has been kept on the grounds of the governor's residence.

Jonathan is thought to have hatched around which year?

A photograph from 1886 shows him already fully grown; the island granted him an official birthday of 4 December in 2022.

Which sense did the tortoise Jonathan keep after going blind and losing his smell?

By the 2020s he was being fed by hand and spent most of his time with Frederik, a fellow male he was introduced to in 1991.

Jonathan appears on the reverse of which coin of his home island?

Commemorative stamps marked his supposed 190th birthday in 2022, and visitors got a certificate with a photo of his first known footprint.

Aldabra Atoll is home to roughly how many giant tortoises, the world's largest population?

The atoll's isolation from humans saved a species whose Indian Ocean cousins were all gone by 1840.

Male Aldabra giant tortoises weigh on average about how much?

Their unusually long necks let them browse branches up to a metre off the ground.

An isolated Aldabra tortoise population lives on Changuu, an island near which African island?

One tortoise there is reportedly 200 years old.

The desert tortoise is the official state reptile of Nevada and which other state?

It spends most of the year inactive in burrows and lives 70 to 80 years; a 2011 split created a second species east of the Colorado River.

The desert tortoise's species name agassizii honours a zoologist from which country?

Louis Agassiz became a Harvard professor; the eastern species is named after David Morafka, a Gopherus specialist.

The keystone gopher tortoise's burrows shelter at least how many other animal species?

Its genus, Gopherus, holds the only tortoises native to North America; it is Georgia's state reptile and Florida's state tortoise.

The gopher tortoise's species name polyphemus refers to which figure from Greek myth?

Fitting for a burrower: Polyphemus was the Cyclops who lived in a cave and was blinded by Odysseus.

The leopard tortoise of African savannas ranks where in size among the world's tortoises?

Typical adults reach 40 cm and 13 kg; it shelters in old fox, jackal or aardvark burrows rather than digging its own.

The African spurred (sulcata) tortoise lives along the southern edge of which desert?

It is the largest mainland tortoise in Africa and third-largest in the world; the name sulcata means 'furrowed'.

In Aesop's fable, why does the hare lose the race to the tortoise?

Ancient readers stressed the hare's over-confidence rather than the tortoise's pluck; the moral 'festina lente' came later.

'The Tortoise and the Hare' is numbered 226 in which catalogue of Aesop's fables?

La Fontaine retold it in the 17th century with the same plot but rather more words.

Most tortoise species have clutches that seldom exceed how many eggs?

Many species lay only one or two, and the mother covers them with soil and leaves them to incubate for 60 to 120 days.

How do tortoise hatchlings break out of their eggs?

The V-shaped notch on a female's plastron below the tail is there to help the eggs pass in the first place.

Which extinct genus held the giant tortoises of Réunion, Mauritius and Rodrigues?

Sailors ate the Mascarene giants into extinction; the last of them were gone by around 1840.

Which scientific body uses 'turtle' for all Testudines and 'tortoise' only for land-dwellers?

British usage calls almost any land-dwelling member a tortoise, and Australians confusingly used it for freshwater turtles.

Tortoises symbolise longevity in which culture in particular?

Chinese and Japanese folk religion also treat them as oracles, and their shells were once used as oracle bones.

Giant tortoise genome studies found gene variants involved in what, possibly explaining their long lives?

Both animals are among the best-documented long-lived reptiles, which is why their genomes were sequenced.

Tu'i Malila, the oldest tortoise ever recorded, died of natural causes in 1965 at what age?

Born in 1777, the radiated tortoise outlived the explorer who delivered it by nearly two centuries.

After her naval career, the tortoise Timothy retired in 1892 to the grounds of which Devon estate?

She was 53 at the time and was thought to be the UK's oldest resident when she died in 2004.

Adwaita, the giant tortoise of Alipore Zoo, was said to have been the pet of which British figure?

Lord Wellesley later handed the tortoise to the Alipur Zoological Gardens when the zoo was set up in 1875.

Too much protein in a herbivorous tortoise's diet has been linked to what problem?

Pet tortoises do best on wild grasses, weeds, leafy greens and certain flowers rather than rich foods.