Sunday, February 16, 2025

Indian Roofed Turtle

In the Central Range of Kaziringa NP in Assam, India we were following a lazy river and found several sections of logs with Indian roofed turtles draped all over them. 

It is rated as Vulnerable by the IUCN. Wikipedia has a very scientific and difficult to read description of it. I copy a small portion of it which was a little bit easier to read: "The carapace is brown, sometimes yellow or orange bordered, with a red to orange medial stripe. The plastron is long and narrow; the forelobe is much shorter than the broad bridge, and the hindlobe is slightly shorter than the bridge and contains a posterior anal notch...Plastron and bridge are yellow with at least two black elongated blotches on each scute, except the gulars and anals which have only a single blotch. The head is moderate in size with a projecting, short, pointed snout. Its upper jaw is not medially notched. Skin on the back of the head is divided into large scales. Dorsally, the head is black with a large crescent-shaped, orange to yellowish red blotch on each temple (these may unite posteriorly to form a V-shaped mark). The jaws are yellow, and the neck is black with numerous yellow stripes. Limbs are olive to gray, and spotted and bordered with yellow. They have large transverse scales...Males are brighter in color than females, and have long, thick tails with the vent beyond the carapacial rim. Females have short tails with the vent under the carapace. Females grow larger than males." They are found in the "Ganges, Brahmaputra, Indus, and Mahanadi river drainages in Pakistan, northern and peninsular India, and Bangladesh."

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