Extremely rare turtle discovered in India

An Asian giant tortoise is one of the rarest species of turtles in the world. A research team has now succeeded in not only detecting such animals, but also supervising them during breeding. The scientists report that villagers have provided information about the freshwater turtles, which can grow up to a meter in size, at the Chandragiri River in India’s Kerala region.

Cantor’s giant softshell turtles (Pelochelys cantorii) are native to rivers in South and Southeast Asia. As a result of, among other things, the destruction of their habitat, they are classified as “critically endangered” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. There is therefore an extremely high risk of wildlife extinction in the near future.

Previous surveys in India failed to detect specimens in the wild, as the team led by Veerappan Deepak of the Animal Science Museum of the Senckenberg Society for Natural Research in Dresden and Francoise Cavada-Blanco of the University of Portsmouth (Great Britain) ) explains. A nesting female has now been discovered in Chandragiri and eggs have been rescued from flooded nests. The hatched young were later released into the river.

The team reported about their research project in the journal “Oryx”. (sda/dpa)