Red-footed tortoise

Chelonoidis carbonarius

Irish Name: Toirtís ruachosach
IUCN Status: Not Evaluated

The red-footed tortoise is indigenous to northern South America. They are medium-sized tortoises with black/brown skin and a dark black, brown or grey shell. These tortoises are highly identifiable due to the brightly coloured scales on their limbs. These colours vary from yellows to oranges to reds. This unique colour pattern gives the red-footed tortoise its name.

Red-footed tortoise

Chelonoidis carbonarius

Irish Name: Toirtís ruachosach
IUCN Status: Not Evaluated

The red-footed tortoise is indigenous to northern South America. They are medium-sized tortoises with black/brown skin and a dark black, brown or grey shell. These tortoises are highly identifiable due to the brightly coloured scales on their limbs. These colours vary from yellows to oranges to reds. This unique colour pattern gives the red-footed tortoise its name.

General Information

Where do they live?

These tortoises are highly distributed among a variety of countries in northern South America. In the wild they can be found from Panama to Argentina, and on the Caribbean islands of Trinidad to Barbados. They can be found in dry and wet forested areas, savannahs and grasslands habitats.

How long do they live?

Red-footed tortoises can live upwards of 50 years. They have been known to live up to 70 years under human care.

What do they eat?

Red-footed tortoises have a mostly herbivorous diet. They have a diet high in fibre and eat mostly grasses, leaves, flowers, roots and shoots from a variety of green and flowering plants. Red-footed tortoises will each fruit from cacti and some fungi as well. Through faeces sampling of wild red-footed tortoises, they have discovered that these animals also eat small amounts of animal matter. They will eat invertebrates (insects) and carrion, which is decaying animal matter.

Group Name

Like most other tortoises, it is very common for red-footed tortoise to live a solitary life and to come together as a breeding pair during the mating season. However, a group of tortoises is called a creep.

Zoo Location

South American House. They share their habitat with the white-faced saki. This is called a mixed-species habitat and allows our animals to further express their natural behaviour, as they may come across each other in the wild.

Closest Related Species/Sister Species

They are closely related to the other members of their genus, including the yellow-footed tortoise, the chaco-tortoise and Galapagos tortoises.

Animal Class

Reptilia

Animal Order

Testudines

Fun Facts

Walk and talk

Many turtles need to move their legs or head to help them to talk. Vocalising in red-footed tortoises is often accompanied by head bobbing as they pump air through their throat. This is because they don't have a diaphragm, like humans, to help move their lungs.

Male or female?

One way to tell male and female red-footed tortoises apart is by their tail size. Male tortoises have a much bigger tail than females. They usually hold it to the side to keep it covered by the shell.

Prey behaviour

Red-footed tortoises can follow the gaze of other red-footed tortoises. This can be very useful when a predator is spotted, other tortoises in line of sight can tell where the threat is coming from.

Eating sand!

Red-footed tortoises are known to sometimes eat sand. This could be to help them to break down the plants that make up most of their diet.

Red colouration

Red-footed tortoises are known for their brightly coloured legs and heads. Males tend to be more colourful than females. Interestingly these tortoises tend to prefer red and yellow colours over other colours like green and blue.

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Family Life

The mating season usually begins during times of higher levels of rain. This occurs between April and May. Scent cues and courtship noises usually attract a male and female to each other for mating. This species of tortoise uses the bright yellow, orange and red colours on their limbs to identify that they have located the correct species. The female will begin nesting 5 – 6 weeks after mating. She will lay her 5- 15 eggs in leaf litter on the forest floor. The hatching of the tortoise eggs is dependent on the temperature of the environment. However, this process usually takes 150 days on average.

Baby Name

Hatchling

Age at maturity

Red-footed tortoises usually reach maturity at 5 years.

Gestation period

Incubation time for eggs takes 150 days

Number of young at birth

Mothers can lay between 5-15 eggs at a time.

Weight at birth

50 g

Adult size

Females can measure on average 28 cm in length and males 34 cm in length. Red-footed tortoises can weigh up to 9 kg. Males will have a concave shape and females will have a flat and level shell underneath.

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Conservation

IUCN Status

Not Evaluated

Current population estimate

Due to the difficult nature of surveying populations of tortoise, and especially the red-footed tortoise that has a large distribution in the wild, there is no current documented estimate of population numbers. Due to the increased pressure of human-caused threats to their habitat, it can be hypothesised that the population is in decline.

Threats

Red-footed tortoises are mostly impacted by human activities such as urbanisation, habitat destruction and hunting.

What is Dublin Zoo doing?

Since 2003, Dublin Zoo has successfully bred a number of red-footed tortoises. These tortoises are still present in the larger European population of red-footed tortoises and are contributing to successful breeding programmes. Having this species at Dublin Zoo also promotes education surrounding the conservation of the red-footed tortoise and some of the threats it may face in the wild.

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